Today I get to give my outsider's perspective on Babcock mania, and it is this: Oh Craaaaaap. Considering Brendan Shanahan, Kyle Dubas (who will end up GM eventually, I bet), and Mike Babcock, the Leafs are on a ridiculous growth path that will build you a team (nay, at least three teams, one on each level) strong enough to contend for AT LEAST the Red Wings' fabled 22 consecutive years.

A hard, seven-game series against the Red Wings taught me to hate Babcock's team; watching Babcock pull together an odd group of aging and rookie stars into something cohesive taught me FEAR. Given how well he did in Detroit, what will Babcock do with Toronto's money, Shanahan, and Dubas behind him? I don't know, but I fear how the Leafs are even now sitting in the warm embers of Babcock's mind like a dragon's egg, growing fiercer by the day.

What will next year's Leafs game look like? If it's anything like the playoffs I just observed, watch for so much solid defense that even if someone's forwards do make it to the net, NOT EVEN THE TAMPA TRIPLETS can buy a lane. His team shut out the Lightning TWICE in the first round.

In honor of Babcock, I thought I'd do something different with the links today, because he and and the king in Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Ulysses have a fair bit in common.

Today's FTB, embedded in excerpts from Ulysses:

It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees...

I am become a name;

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,

To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—

Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill

This labour...

Come, my friends,

'T is not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

From The Branches