Reasonable Expectations: Dave Nonis

There will be a lot of words spent on Brian Burke's legacy in Toronto, his failures, the reasons behind his firing, and even one or two on his successes over the past four years and change with the Maple Leafs. Much of the debate about whether the firing was warranted will focus on the reasons given for his firing before eventually moving on to whether there were viable hockey-related causes for his dismissal.

My experience has been that this debate quickly moves onto the question of whether the fans' expectations have skewed their view of Burke's performance. It is almost formulaic that you'll see Burke's biggest defenders say that it isn't possible to have expected more out of Burke considering the team that he inherited from John Ferguson Jr. The reality is that it is hard to imagine that a team can be rebuilt into a competitive unit with a promising bevy of prospects in four years. However, it's hard to blame fans for expecting one of those to exist after four years when all they have done is listen to Burke's own proclamations:

"I'm not interested ... in a five-year rebuild like some of these teams have done," said Burke. "Maybe because of my age, maybe just because I know it doesn't have to be five years because it wasn't in Anaheim."

A full review of Burke's tenure will require a piece meal approach because the topic is so vast but one theme I think that will become clear will be that ultimately Burke was the author of his own demise. His struggles came from having his own belief about the way that things should be done honourably and that, as the quote above shows, he thought too highly of his abilities as a general manager. While a certain self-confidence is needed in order to be a GM, let alone the Leafs' GM, I think you can trace a lot of his troubles to those two issues. However, that'll be the focus of another post.

What I want to do today is to prevent future arguments that centre around the moving target of what people expect the Leafs' 14th general manager to accomplish given the roster and prospect system that he has inherited. Obviously, he had a hand in developing it but if you look down the roster you'll see that JFJ also had a hand in building it. Such is life as a GM. So, take a look at the tables below (courtesy of CapGeek and HockeysFuture) and vote in the poll and expand on the vote in the comments.

The Maple Leafs, Marlies, and Reserves

Unsigned CHL, NCAA, European Prospects

Taking into account the team and system that Dave Nonis has inherited, when do you think that it is acceptable to expect that the Maple Leafs be competitive and have a bright future?