Monday, August 09, 2010

And on the 7th Day God Traded Thomas Kaberle.

The most anticipated and talked about trade in Toronto Maple Leaf history will go down in the next week and I think I speak for most Leaf fans when I say I hope it doesn't take the full 7 calendar days. I don't think I can stand another week of talking or hearing or reading about this.

We live in an age where every single thought that crosses our mind becomes a status update, tweet or comment on a blog. If you want to indulge in just about anything, there is somewhere to do it 24/7 - countless stories, a million opinions - it’s all there for us to consume. In the case of this Kaberle trade it has reached the point where we have read his name so many times it starts to trigger something uncomfortable because we know we’ve reached a new low.

Kaberle. Kaberle. Kaberle. See, makes you feel a bit sick now doesn’t it?

If the folks over at PPP could give us a statistic on just how many “Kaberle” mentions have shown up on their site over the past year, I would wager that the sheer volume might rival "Haiti Earthquake" on the rest of the internet. We’re obsessed with this potential deal, and it shows, a million times over.

Even Mike Ulmer - paid by the Leafs to talk about the Leafs - has reached his end. He has sworn he will not type a single character more about this trade until it either does or does not go down. Eklund too has published two Kaberle-free stories in a row. It would appear that for Leaf fans and writers the universe has a distinct edge and we're stepping back from it in fear of what we’ve become.

When this deal finally goes down, brace yourself for a let down. Nothing short of Toronto getting back Sidney Crosby and Drew Doughty in a package will feel as big as we’ve made this thing to be. No “top-six forward” that Toronto is likely to land will fulfill the prophecy that we have all co-created. No forward will be able to carry the weight of all of this and I warn you fellow Leaf fans that it is perilous to expect otherwise.

This hockey team is a work in progress. There is no rule that says by training camp this is the team we will all live and die with for the season. So much can happen. Injuries, promotions, more trades, buyouts, rival teams falling on hard times or good times. Kaberle, an exceptional player in the league was never able to sway the teams fortunes on his own and neither will the player that replaces him. This deal is only a fraction of the equation, and I hope for all of our sake that once it's done we can go back to seeing it that way.

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