If I've learned one thing over the past little while running this blog is that Leafs fans like four things: Lists of any sort, watching their rivals flail about, smashing up Kerry Fraser's mailbox (No occifer, I was not flying around the neighbourhood while hanging out of the back of a beat up 80s pickup. The bat? I was just playing some baseball in the park...at 3am...plastered...), and wondering what might have been.

Mile High Hockey did something similar in that they compiled a list of Avalanche players. The big difference being that it looks at the wonderful recent history and has a positive spin (and apparently no end in sight due to some sorry law school excuse). Those SOBs have two Stanley Cups in my lifetime so sorry if our list looks at the dark side of our history. After all, it's been 41 years without a single victory of note or player worth mentioning. I guess this idea will prove that all of the Leafs' greats all were blessed with a ticket out of town (or not even into town) before the collective shittiness of the city, its denizens, Lake Ontario, Liberal/NDP attitudes, Orange Day Parades, and Bob McCown would stain their legacy.

So what are we going to do? Make a list of The All-Time Leafs That Should Have Been.

The General put together a happy list filled with sunshine and great players that wore the Maple Leaf proudly on their chest. Down Goes Brown...well you know what kind of list he put together without even clicking through (but do anyway because it's awesome) but he looked at crappy players that actually played for the Leafs although based on their performances you can't assume that they had much pride. I want to go that one step further into wound-picking and look at not the best or worst evers but the greatest Maple Leafs...that never were great.

Anyway, I am not sure if I will actually get any responses from the members of the media that I will contact but if not they'll know that there is a website on the intertubes that likely is not a fan. Actually, screw that. They'd probably submit a useless list or name players from some period Chemmy and I are completely unfamiliar with like the 70s or the early 80s (Hey! we were in diapers. Setlle down LD). So this exercise is left completely to you, the readers, commenters, lurkers, and random visitors (I see you EdmontonOilers.com and Maple Leaf and Sport Entertainment!) to formulate a list of up to 25 players (can you tell that there might be a flood of them out there?) that you think would form the All-Time Leafs That Should Have Been. E-mail them to me at pensionplanpuppets at gmail dot com. Don't actually write it like that because otherwise I won't get it. I just don't want any more e-mails from drug manufacturers asking me if I want to make my wife crumble in ecstasy. Sell me a freaking wife first dumbasses.

Back on topic, you're probably thinking "So...we do the work for you?" and that would only be partially true. Instead of sermonizing from the bully pulpit you're list will provide an insight as to the views of Leafdom. Then I'll do the heavy lifting (with Chemmy, he's heavier than he looks!) and we'll write beautiful posts that will either make you smash in your computer screen, hit the bottle (again - Jared) or weep at the thoughts of what might have been and really, melancholy and depression make up the majority of a Leaf fan's pie of emotions just ahead of rage and hunger for actual pie (sorry, that's senators fans).

So, some guidance? The elements of your list are only constrained by how effectively you can make the case. Was a freaking conference call quashed at the last minute? Did he get drafted with a Leafs' pick (talk about not narrowing it down)? Did a chiseling, pedophile-loving SOB, rotting in hell let him go over money? Did some dumb, stick-swinging, useless Slovak (go Czechs!) derail a promising career (careful, grainy video)? Then they belong on the list but where? Well, that's where you come in and give your opinion. Title the e-mail "Things That Will Make You Cry" and hopefully in a couple of weeks we'll have a definitive-ish list derived from some combination of the Google algorithm, Black Magic, and numbers from 1-25 weighted by potential salary expense divided by minutes played squared by...well, it's all a little academic but it'll give us a great list to read and discuss in between wondering what we did collectively (or individually LD) to curse the Leafs.

So...yeah, e-mail me with as much or as little beyond just the players' names as you would like and let's get this ball rolling. A big glove tap to The General for giving me the shot in the ribs that gave the perfect spin to an old idea.