Take me out to the experience.

Taking the experience out of the experience. That is what this blog will partially be about. It's also about a trend or mindset that has been building for many years in our society, but now it is wildly out of control. It might even be irreversible at this stage. That remains to be seen.

Take me out to the ball game. The seventh inning stretch. It was part of the live game experience at every park that had baseball. How did Harry Caray know that?

"There's a sense of integrity and honesty in telling the people what you actually see and feel and I think if there's any difference at all...some announcers may be more interesting than others because of their style and style is personality, whatever your personality might be. I'm a people guy and I think everywhere I go I look for people to talk to....I go to bars because who do you see there, baseball fans. You find out firsthand what they like and what they dont like. You can't learn that any other way. Unless you have an occasion to talk to the true fan."

-Harry Caray

I remember very clearly when I would go to baseball games with my grandmother, she would always sing along with the seventh inning stretch. She would also always buy a beer, and get a bag of peanuts. It was part of the experience. The live baseball game experience.

When I was growing up, we had season tickets to the Montreal Expos, at Jarry Park, from their first season in 1969 until we moved away to another city in 1977. I dont remember much about the 1969 season, but I know we went to games. I was only 4 years old that first season. The Expos had special days once a year, where the players and their children would be on the field before the game and if you were a season ticket holder and were interested, you could let your kids come on the field with the players and their kids. I was one of those lucky ones that got to do that and in the family scrapbook, I have pictures of that experience to prove it and look back on. Through the years, part of the experience was getting fries between innings, and always a soda pop to go with it. It was little things like that. Like the sun shining in our eyes for the first few innings of a night game because of how the park was constructed and the seats we had. Many other things like that also come to my mind. Too many to mention for this blog. I will take on that memory treasure chest in another blog on another day.
Safe to say, while Jarry Park was not a great field to host Major League baseball, it did have that Wrigley Field and Fenway Park ambiance that cant be replaced or described. When the Expos finally moved to the Olympic Stadium in 1976, that was the beginning of the end for the franchise. It was a terrible place to watch a game. It was easier to stay home and watch the game on TV if you could. And that is what we did. There was not much experience left in the game experience.

You can't convince a fool against his will.

-Ernie Banks

Ernie Banks played 24 big league seasons, all with the Chicago Cubs. There was never even a remote chance he would play with any other team, even though most of those Cubs teams were terrible and he was a superstar. He was a Cub. Simple as that. He was their brand. He was actually known as "Mr. Cub" and "Mr. Sunshine". He was a sensation in his first season, then went on to be an All Star for 11 straight seasons. He is considered one of the greatest players of all time. He was a shortstop, yet he hit more than 500 home runs in his career. Most shortstops would be considered power hitters if they hit more than 200 home runs for their careers. He hit 512.

More than anything, Ernie Banks just loved to play baseball. He was well known to say that he wished he could play more. "Let's Play Two" was his famous saying. He loved playing baseball so much he would have loved to play a doubleheader, where most players would not like that sort of thing. Because of all of the above, the fans loved him. And they loved the Cubs, even though they were a bad team almost every year Banks was a professional.
In today's game, a player like Banks in his prime would almost certainly be traded, or, he would leave due to free agency. It's the business of baseball, not the sport and fun of baseball. It's how the game has changed. Not for the better.
In Banks last season, 1971, I was only 6 years old. By then, I was already a massive baseball fan. Although I was more a Montreal Expos fanatic, I did love baseball. Playing it, watching it, cheering for my team. Even at that young age, and Banks advanced age and in the last year of his career, I understood what a big deal Ernie Banks was. In a time now where the word legend is tossed around way too loosely, Ernie Banks was about as legendary as a legend can be. During one game I watched on TV, the announcers talked about Banks as though he were the messiah. And he was, to baseball fans. Harry Caray understood that.

On a trip I took about 10 years ago, I made it a point to stop at certain parks. Parks that had that aura of experience. Fenway Park in Boston was one of those. It didn't disappoint. I had already been to Dodger Stadium in the 1980s on another trip, and to this day, that is the palace of all stadiums I have ever been to, and that number of parks is many. You just have to be there to soak in that atmosphere. There is just no way I can explain that feeling to you if you haven't been there. Even just approaching it from the highway to park my car and being able to see the entire park because the highway was far elevated relative to the stadium. It is just breathtaking. When I was very young and the Expos would play there, it felt like watching a game from Fantasy Island.
But on that recent trip I also stopped in to Wrigley Field in Chicago. If I had a bucket list, which I dont, but if I did, that would have been on the list. It is another that didn't disappoint. It was like walking into a time machine. Where time was frozen. Where baseball was still baseball. Played on grass and not at a cookie cutter stadium with advertising all over the field but with Ivy covered outfield walls, seats that were so old they were timeless, where the smell of beer and hot dogs was everywhere. Where you could hear the crack of the bat from any seat and you might even catch a foul ball. I still have 10 or so foul balls we caught back in the day. One of those was from Wrigley, which my father caught, but I was too young to remember that trip. I think I was only 5 at that time.

People will come, Ray. They come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up the driveway, not knowing for sure why they are doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past.
"Of course, we won't mind if you look around," you'll say. "It's only $20 per person."
They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it. For its money they have, and peace they lack. Then they will walk off to the bleachers and sit in their shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines. Where they sat with their children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it will be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces.
People will come, Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers.
It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that was once good. And it could be again.

Can it be that again? I doubt it. The trend of society and the people who control that variable says no. They dont want it to. They have lost their moral compass, and they are the tour guides.

Tim Horton (1930-1974) is a name almost exclusively known with donut shops now. But that wasn't the case when I was growing up. Tim Horton was a great hockey player for a long time who died tragically in a car accident back in 1974. At the time, like Banks, he was an older player, but still viable. These days, you would be hard pressed to find a baseball or hockey player still playing at the age of 44.
In spite of his longevity and success, like most hockey players of his day, Tim Hortons would barely make enough money to live off of as a hockey player. Many, including Ernie Banks and others had day jobs in the summer and off season to make ends meet. Ernie Banks in fact worked at a bank. Tim Horton took another route.
Horton opened his first donut shop in 1964 while he was still a star player in the NHL in Hamilton, which is about 1 hour from both Toronto and Buffalo, two teams he played for in his NHL career. By 1968, he had created a franchise of many shops and was well off. Horton died travelling from Toronto to Buffalo, which can be a very dangerous drive in the winter. I have done it many times. It is known as a snow belt. Horton liked fast cars and he liked to drive fast. He also was a drinker and all those factors played into the single car crash that took his life that night in February 1974.
While Horton had franchised out his original donut shop, which he also ran when he was able to in the early days, he co owned almost if not all the franchises and had a hands on approach to making sure it stayed true to the brand which he had built. He had name value, and he used that wisely, not loosely and flippantly.
Once he died, all that changed.
Like Ernie Banks, as soon as he was eligible, he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. In fact, both were inducted in 1977. Without Horton around, the franchise was now just a coffee and donut shop chain, without its founder. That is where the trouble started.

What a lot of people dont know is that Tim Horton and his partner Ron Joyce built that first location. I dont mean built the business, they physically built the actual building brick by brick. In addition, in the early days, if you wanted a franchise, you had to go to Donut School, learn how to make the products and then work a certain amount of hours before you could have a location. As the brand built out, they were very careful to make sure they were operated to the same standard as the first location.
When Tim Horton died, his partner Ron Joyce bought out Hortons widow in 1974. He operated and expanded the franchise and he did that until 1995, when he sold the chain to Wendys. I used to travel a lot in those days, and if you went into any rest stop plaza off the highway, there would be a Wendys and Tim Hortons side by side. It was almost like they were operated as one restaurant. Around that time, Tim Hortons started selling bagels and sandwiches, and as the years have passed, now it is considered a restaurant, not a donut shop. In 2014, the entire chain was bought by Restaurant Brands, which also operates Burger King and Popeyes Chicken among their large stable of brands.
These days, if you go into a Tim Hortons it's nothing like the ambiance of the early chain of stores. It's an assembly line of service, the prices are sky high, the workers barely speak english and dont understand the product, and the offering is very little donuts and mostly higher end items. It has become a big chain with no ambiance period. Many dont even bother going into the store, but line up 30 deep at the drive thru window. There is very little experience left to the entire experience. If you watch the video above, you will see how that experience was described by those who worked there or operated the earlier franchises. That is ancient history now.
As well, because Tim Hortons in the early days was associated with a famous and respected hockey player, and then as a Canadian meeting place and it now has tried to expand into other countries, with very few exceptions, it is failing in that endeavor. Tim Horton as an icon means nothing to Americans, and Tim Hortons as a donut shop doesnt have any cache at all. Dunkin Donuts would mean more to an American. As a Canadian, Tim Hortons is like how baseball used to be. It meant something. Now, it's just a massive chain restaurant like many others. As it has scaled up, as a massive operation like Restaurant Brands would be expected to do with it, it has lost the core reason it was so popular in the first place.
Those reasons were simple. It was a relatively inexpensive place to get some comfort food and a coffee, and it was a nice place to do that, and in many instances you might even make a few friends because the customers were very loyal. Many would travel to just one location. It had a family feel to it. As well, the servers in many cases had worked years at the same location. I can say with certainty that that is now not the case.
Why is there such a difference now?
There is a big difference between those who build a business and those who buy a business to strictly make a profit. One watches the details, the other watches the numbers.

Many remember the classic scene in the movie Wall Street. In case you dont, I will put it above. In the clip, Gordon Gekko lists both the problems that people like him create, and the reasons that the business will fail because of it. What he did not do, is acknowledge his part in all of that. We all know the Greed is Good part, but there is much more in there many forget.

A few excerpts.

"The men who built this great industrial empire made sure of it because it was their money at stake. Today, management has no stake in the company."

"Teldar paper has 33 different Vice Presidents each, earning over $200,000 a year." (This was in the mid 80s.)

"The new law of evolution in Corporate America seems to be survival of the unfittest."

"I am not a destroyer of companies, I am a liberator of them."

Here is what the character didn't say. He only has a stake so he can destroy the parts and sell them off. That is his skin in the game. His law was killing the unfit so he could eat them. He had no interest in survival for anybody but himself. He didn't actually destroy companies. He found companies on life support and he pulled the plug when he got the last breath out of them. He did not liberate anything.

It sounds odd to say it but greed was not the worst part. The motivation of the action and the actions they take to get there are the far bigger issue. In fact, while the word Greed got the headline, and now the hits on You Tube, it's not even the right word for what Gekko was describing. He was describing productivity and accountability, and yes, drive to be successful. Survival of the fittest but only in a scenario where he survives and they dont. He had no interest in making anything better for anybody but himself. In his way, he was a vulture.
Here is what the average person wouldnt know about the Gordon Gekko character. He is based on Ivan Boesky.
Who was Ivan Boesky? He was known as an insider trading moneymaker. What he would do is buy into the company's stock with the sole intention of selling that stock if the company was to get bought out by a much larger corporation. Because that is a very dangerous thing to try and win at, he would find insiders who could give him illegal information on the chances of those deals happening and closing. They call that arbitrage. There is nothing wrong with it if you just use your own research to figure that out, but when you do it like Boesky did, it's a crime and you go to jail for acting in that matter. Which he did. In other words, a fair arbitrage player is like a sharp poker player. He makes the right bet based on his skills. A dirty criminal one only play poker in a game where he knows exactly the cards his opponents have even though they are theoretically not showing. He cheats.
While Gekkos character was based on the offensive and brash Boesky, they actually operated in different ways. Boesky, as mentioned, simply was out to buy stock and sell it if and when it rose in value. Gekko, on the other hand, in spite of what he said in that speech, was one who bought distressed companies at a massive discount, then broke them up, sold off the parts for a huge profit and ruined any chance they had at success going forward.
But Gekko and Boesky did share one common trait and strategy. Neither had started any of those companies nor had they any interest in making them viable or better. In the below clip, he lays out exactly what he was.

How much is enough, Gordon?
It's not a question of enough pal. It's a zero sum game. Somebody wins, somebody loses....capitalism at its finest.
What I do. Stock and real estate speculation.
Why do you need to wreck this company? Because it's wreckable.

Not once does he mention making it work better. Nor does he even try.
So, the impetus for this blog was the current The Container Store bankruptcy. It is everything that this blog is about.
While reading up about that on LinkedIn, I came across a piece written by a woman named Nicole Eisdorfer. She lays out much of the situation with The Container Store and why it has failed, in her view of course. She also relates that she worked in the store many years ago, and what that culture was like. I will summarize all of that, but I encourage you to read her piece. It's very well written and well thought out.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/from-crown-jewel-cultures-common-commodity-harsh-eisdorfer-phd-bx11c/

-employees weren’t just trained; they were nurtured. The Container Store’s vibrant culture has faded into a robotic, monotone husk.
-their approach — empathetic, thorough, and people-focused
-the founders, made a point to personally visit stores and remember associates by name. You could tell they actually cared.
-employees weren’t seen as expendable resources but as the company’s greatest differentiators.
-what set The Container Store apart was the tenure of its employees. Some associates had been with the company for more than 10 years, some 25.
-the founders weren’t distant executives; they were storytellers and cultural icons whose presence and philosophies shaped daily operations.
-As The Container Store scaled its operations and became a publicly traded company, the pressures of growth and profitability began to erode its cultural foundation.
-the decline in The Container Store’s employee-first philosophy.
-customers who once felt understood and valued began to see The Container Store as just another retailer.

"The Container Store’s journey mirrors a larger trend in corporate America — where the drive for efficiency and scalability often comes at the cost of the very culture that built success in the first place. The story of The Container Store is a cautionary tale for any organization looking to scale. Culture is not a luxury; it is the lifeblood of sustainable success. To preserve what makes them unique."

-Nicole Eisdorfer

I would argue that the nature of scaling up a business, especially when it is taken over by corporate types in of itself is the reason they fail. It is not about the culture, the experience the customer and employees have, but the numbers. And, as Gordon Gekko did get right, if management has no real financial stake in the entire thing, they dont have to care. They apply their principles, techniques and strategies to something that was working just fine, which is why they bought it in the first place, and if that doesnt work, which most of the time it wont, they simply just let it fail and take their loss. While the original owners, like Tim Horton, who started it, nurtured it, and owned it would not have let it get that way. They cared that it would flourish and succeed. It wasn't just numbers. It was an entity. It was an experience. Customers paid gladly to have that, because it gave them peace and a sense that it was worth supporting.
A short example from personal experience. A longtime friend of mine had a father who started a company in the 1970s, from scratch. He started with one store, but as they scaled up, one store at a time, he maintained the culture of every store, and the customer base. When he got to about 30 stores, all pretty much local, it was still that way, and very successful. At that point, K Mart bought him out with a massive overpay for the whole thing, and he sold out. Its the kind of scenario Boesky would have loved. Within two years, the whole thing went bust. The kind of scenario Gekko would have loved. KMart changed all of it to make it more efficient. It may have even been more efficient. But, it wasn't the same business, and it failed horribly. As soon as they buy, they scale it, then they adjust it, and then when it changes, it fails. 

Efficiency is something. It isnt everything. Customer experience can mean a lot more than that. 
Simply, if they had just kept doing the same thing, the same way, and opened a few stores at a time in different cities, and taken the care to make sure they were run properly, it would have kept succeeding. They scaled it and they wrecked it. Not that they cared. KMart was a massive entity back then, and the money lost on that deal was not significant. However, true to their way of doing things, it wasn't long before KMart itself was in big trouble and out of business. If they were smart, they would have enlisted my friend's father to run KMart. He had the right formula. He built it, he managed it, he cared about it. He knew it. He made it work. 
I remember a time when you would go to the grocery store, and some of the cashiers had been there for 30 years or more. They knew three generations of a family. By name. Those days are gone. Sadly, it doesnt seem to matter in the world of buy outs, arbitrage, foolish scaling and stock priced based options compensation.

What is the answer to this situation? Well, I get why everyone has to scale up now. To compete on price and cost of doing business, you have to be large enough to compete with a Walmart, or Amazon, or any big box store. Many smaller hardware stores simply can't compete with Home Depot. They dont have the buying power. But even more importantly, if you can't just stay local, you have to expand out slowly and carefully. Getting larger but losing your core advantage is a good way to go bust faster. In doing that, you will certainly encounter a Gordon Gekko type, who sees the value of your assets, but not your overall business. You have damaged it and he sees it as easily wreckable if he just pushes the right buttons. 

Maybe its just a foolish romantic notion of mine to think that the experience meant as much as it did, or does now. Maybe I'm not romantic about it all, but just nostalgic. I remember what it felt like to experience that experience. That experience that came from that scene in Field of Dreams. It was worth the price we paid for that, and it would be worth the price now if we had to pay more for it. But, that is just a dream now, not a reality.

It seems nobody is playing on that Field of Dreams anymore. Can you convince these fools who think they understand a business better than the builders of that business who made it what it is, what they wanted to buy from them? I dont think so. They dont have the will to see it that way. Not the way we saw it back in the day. 

In anything, play to your strengths and maximize your potential

Because this is a very long blog, I have chosen to highlight in blue the main points if you choose to not read the entire text. I understand why some don't. For myself, I like to shape the story and write all the pertinent parts down that support and enlighten the point I am making. That is my style. It's not for everybody. I get that. We live in a 140 character Twitter world, and I have to adapt to that in some respect. Consider the amount of time and effort the reader is willing to put in on your product. In other words, be realistic about the entire thing. That theme will run through this blog anyway. I might as well take my own advice. 

Last week, before my weekly floor hockey game, I stopped off at the local Food Basics grocery store to pick up a few things. It was 8pm, it shouldn't be busy (and wasn't), and I should have been in and out in a flash. That wasn't the case.

It was hardly the first time that has happened at that particular store. The management has always been horrendous there and the prices on items are frequently wrong--causing major delays at the checkout, and on top of that, now they are very committed to having customers check out their own groceries at self-serve terminals. 

As a result of all that, they have 6 rows to have cashiers check you out but frequently only have 2 open--and in many cases, only one. This was one of those times. I had 4 easy items, all with no chance of a price check. I should have been in and out in a flash. 

As I approached the other checkout there was a guy, a guy who has worked at this store for at least 10 years. He is a good cashier. Polite, knowledgeable, fast, and he does a solid job. In this case he was in one of the rows, but he was closed. Did he have important work to do? No. He was cleaning the area and easily he could see that the only other line was backing up, and in fact, that was due to many customers having large amounts to check out and then they were added to the few that had only a few items, including myself. There should easily be two lines to check out those customers separately. There normally is at every grocery store. But there wasn't this time. 

The big thing at Food Basics now is a new rewards program. They are pushing the crap out of that. That is because their main competitor, Loblaws, and Loblaws discount division, No Frills, have a very good and very efficient rewards program called PC points that draws customers. I get why Food Basics are doing it. But, that isn't the only reason No Frills does far better than Food Basics. It's because the prices are always correct and the service at the cash register is far superior. All in all, both have about the same prices and sales, week to week. The only reason I ever go to Food Basics is because it's right around the corner. Otherwise, I never would. And the reason for that is because the service is so consistently bad at Food Basics.

It is getting to the point I won't even do that anymore. They simply don't understand who their customers are and when they shop. And why they shop there. I get why they are doing the rewards program anyway. It is to appear they are keeping up with Loblaws/No Frills, but more so, it's to gather as much data as they can on their customers so they can upsell them more products. That is why they all have rewards programs. 

As with many, I shop at Food Basics because it's convenient, cost effective and should be time effective. Should be, but it's not. If they had competent management at the store, they could easily see that they aren't catering to the customer in that very simple way. Many times, I have called out the various managers at Food Basics over the years, and explained that to them. They all say they will do better, but better has never happened. I suspect it's a corporate decision that comes from Food Basics controlling company, Metro. I guess they don't think it matters. 

That isn't why I started this blog. It's an example of what I will say next, but it's exactly the same thing with much higher stakes.

I started writing this blog a month ago, but it just wasn't coming out right, so I sat on it for a bit. I was waiting for something to add to it. And then, last night, I got what I needed. Life is like that sometimes. You just have to be patient and wait for the pieces to fall into place.

Before I get to the meat of the blog, a bit of bread. 

I understand winning is important. I understand coaches and managers have a way and believe that their way is the way to do it. I get that they are hired because that vision aligns with the higher ups that picked them. I am well aware that we live in a culture that celebrates the big days, like Thanksgiving, or Christmas or Valentines day. As such, every move that is made in pro sports now is focused on winning the championship. In fact, if you listen to interviews, you will hear those exact words. 

Things like...

I chose this team over the other because I think they can win it all.

We will be judged on how far we go in the playoffs. 

We got this player as they have a track record of winning and producing in the playoffs. 

I could give you thousands of examples of all that in a bunch of articles and quotes we have all read many times. I won't. There is no need. It's common knowledge that most, if not all follow this principle. Tis the season, buy chocolate and/or flowers on Valentines day, be thankful for this or that on Thanksgiving day. As if that absolves you of how you act on the other days of the year. It's a mindset.

But, let's suppose that even under that mindset, that it is valid to approach things. That is the goal. What are the tradeoffs to using that strategy? And also, what if the entire concept is wrong? What if the previous team lost for reasons that are actually not the common theory, and altering the entire structure of how you play the game not only changes the product you see on a day to day basis, but wont elicit better results on the big days later on? My premise is that is exactly what is happening with the Toronto Maple Leafs this season.

For those who don't know the recent history of the Leafs, I will briefly summarise it. The Leafs have not won the Stanley Cup, the biggest prize in professional hockey, since 1967. That is now 57 years and counting. Not only that, they haven't even made the finals to try and win it in all that time. If that wasn't bad enough, in the last 15 years, they have only won one playoff round in all their tries. Even that win was in peril for that entire series. Last year, they were taken out in the first round again, even though most would argue they had a much better team than their opponent, the Boston Bruins. I would certainly argue that.

Because there are such high expectations for the current team based on their high end talent, the next step was firing the coach, Sheldon Keefe. This came one year after they changed the General Manager. I have to say I am not surprised they changed the coach. He had several tries to get them over the top and has failed just about every time. I thought he was out coached in every series and his teams were not completely prepared for what the other coach tried against them, and if he stayed, they would not go on to succeed. 

However, who and what they replaced him with, Craig Berube, while it seems to be working now, in my view, will elicit the exact same results. Berube and Keefe do have different styles, but they align in many ways with what they think wins games. 

Friday night the Leafs played the Washington Capitals. Last year, the Capitals were terrible. They barely made the playoffs and then were clobbered in the first round and out. They made several changes to their personnel, most notably getting players who could score. Because of that, they are now among the top teams in the league, and lead the league in goals scored per game. If you look at the Leafs roster, you would expect them to be near the top of the league in goals scored per game. They are not. They are near the bottom. All of their highest paid players are high skill players, who would appear to be paid to score first and defend as much as possible when they can. That isn't the way they are being used. That is a decision and strategy that came with their new head coach, Craig Berube.

Berube has one claim to fame as a coach. He won the Stanley Cup with the St Louis Blues in 2019. The Blues came into the league in 1967 as an expansion franchise, the year after the Leafs won their last Cup. Until 2019, they had never won the Cup either. Because Berube got them there, he now has coach credibility. He did it. You can't take that away from him. But as I will detail later, the type of player Berube was in his many years in the league, and his overall results as a coach do not support the theory that he will take a team like the Leafs anywhere come playoff time. More about that later.

In Friday night's game, the Leafs played the way they have been coached to play all year by Berube. Dump the puck in, chase it, win it back, throw every shot on the net, fight for the rebound, and not to make clever or pretty plays. Berube calls that playing North/South, not East/West. In other words, exactly the way Berube played. He played that way because he had to. He was not a star player with high skill. He was tough and he could win pucks back. That worked for him. It doesn't mostly work with a team like the Leafs as they have been constructed. Berube also calls that getting greasy goals. Generally speaking, high end players don't score greasy goals. They score skill goals. 

Because of that, they were beaten 3-1. They played to win the game 2-1, or 3-2, but the breaks didn't go their way. What was Berube's comment after the game?

 “They were just more competitive than us,” Berube said of the Caps. “Played a harder game than us, won more puck battles than us, skated better than us. They were just better.”

While that may be true it completely misses the point. If you are relying on just playing hard, winning back pucks and limiting the other team's chances, what you are essentially saying is that on nights when you can't do that, the game can go either way. Last night it went that way. Washington scored 3 goals. The first was a play where one of the Leafs players made a mistake and then Washington banged it in the net. The second goal was an unlucky break when the Leaf player passed the puck on the boards but it hit the referees skate and then Washington took that break and scored. The third goal was into an empty net. 

The Leafs scored once, and that goal was a sharp pass from the defense to one of their top players, John Tavares, who was in on a breakaway and then made a great skill play to beat the goalie. They had other chances but did not cash them in. Otherwise, it was a low chance, low skill, low scoring game. The kind of game that can go either way. In many ways, it was the type of game the Leafs were losing in the playoffs for the last 4 or 5 years. More about that later.

On Wednesday, the Leafs won another low scoring game, 3-2 against Nashville. While Washington is one of the top teams in the league this year, and can score, Nashville is one of the worst and couldn't put the puck in the ocean if they were on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic. They scored one goal on a complete fluke bounce, a very lucky break, but when the game was on the line, the Leafs scored 3 skill goals in a row to win that. Nevertheless, keeping the score low and relying on some lucky bounces almost cost the Leafs the game. They easily can beat a team like Nashville 6-3 by just using more skill plays and giving up a few more chances in the pursuit of scoring more.

Berube's comments on the Washington game were that lucky bounces happen--which they do, but that the team lost because the other team played harder. While that is probably true he again misses the point. When you play the style Berube wants, lucky breaks will likely determine the overall winner and loser of the game, when it shouldn't. If you have high skill and likely more skill than your opponent, you should not rely on bounces and hard work. Other teams can get bounces and can work hard. They can't outscore your high skill level if you have an edge in that area. The entire team has been built to score goals and make plays. I'm not saying they shouldn't play defense or be responsible, but playing against your own advantage never makes sense. It wont work every night or every time, but the majority of the time, if you have the higher skill players, you will win most games simply by outscoring the other team on the chances both teams end up getting. 

Saturday night, Washington went into Montreal to play the Canadiens. Montreal is a young team with promise, but they have made big bets on a number of younger players who appeared to be top scorers but are not scoring. Montreal has a tough time putting good chances in the net. Washington has a number of high skill guys who finish good chances. In this game, Montreal was out to a quick 2-0 lead, and clearly outplayed and outchanced Washington in the first period. When Montreal did give up chances, their high end goalie kept them out of the net. That is a big component of any team. Washington's goalie did the same from the 2nd period on, keeping Montreal to 2 goals for the entire game. Washington scored a high skill goal to start the 2nd period, then Montreal bombarded them the remainder of the period but did not score. When the 3rd period started, Washington gave up 4 breakaways in a row, but Montreal didn't score on any of them. Then Washington began to find its way, and scored 3 goals where they worked hard to get their chance, and their talent buried them. Washington was happy to trade chances with Montreal all night, because they know most nights against teams like Montreal they are going to win the game by doing that. If they tried to play the tight, dump and chase game that the Leafs now play, they might have lost 2-1. In fact, in the first game of the season, the Leafs played in Montreal, and lost 1-0 to the Canadiens. Then, a couple of weeks later Montreal played in Toronto and the Leafs beat them 4-1. It's not rocket science to see the handwriting on the wall there.

Also on Saturday, Toronto played Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is an old, tired, slow and bad team. At one time, the players on that team were the ones who did the high scoring and winning. Those days are over. Trading chances with them at this point is a very good strategy if you have the players the Leafs do. Yet, the Leafs tried to play the tight checking and low scoring game, and were down 3-2 near the end of the game. Pittsburgh scored two empty net goals late to make it 5-2, but in essence, it was yet another low scoring game that the Leafs lost on bounces and lucky breaks. They are clearly locked into that strategy. The question is why and is this wise?

One of the problems that the Leafs have had in the last few years is bad goaltending in the playoffs. Last year it was Ilya Samsonov, who was so bad at times last year he was waived through the league with no takers, and then sat out for a month or so. He did come back on late in the season, as he is an extremely talented and streaky goalie. But when playoff time came, he let in some terrible goals that cost the team games. It didn't take much to lose those games, as the Leafs were clearly playing the same style they play now. Play to win 2-1, 3-2, and hope your goalie stops all the shots he should and then some. That didn't happen. They lost games 4-1, 3-2, and in the deciding game, 2-1 in overtime. In that last game, the goalie, Samsonov made a mistake on the winning goal and that was that. He wasn't the only reason they lost that game or on that last play, but he was a big reason. They lost game 4 because he let in some bad and soft goals, which he fully admitted let down the team. It was an issue.

If you are going to be a high scoring, high chance team that will naturally give up a fair amount of chances of their own, you have to have a solid goalie to at least make enough saves when you need them to win the game at the end of the day. Leaf GM Brad Treliving realized this, he let Samsonov walk away for nothing this summer, and replaced him with a goalie who had been a solid backup for years but has showed signs that he is ready to be a starter, if not a solid 1-2 combo with their current young goalie Joseph Woll, who is a starter but is frequently injured, as he was in the playoffs last year. Woll replaced Samsonov in games 5 and 6 of last year's playoffs, and carried the team to two wins but was injured on the last play of game 6 and missed game 7. Would the team have won game 7 if Woll played that game? It's debatable. They only gave up two goals anyway in that last game. But perhaps they play a more aggressive game and win 4-3 with the confidence that Woll would make the big saves. I don't think the team ever had confidence Samsonov was that guy. Nor should they have. Samsonov has a track record of letting the team down.

Samsonov came to the Leafs from Washington. Washington gave up on Samsonov as well, as he was horrible for them. Last year they also had terrible goaltending. This off season, they went out and got Logan Thompson as their new goalie, in addition to adding all the scorers they have. Thompson clearly gives them the goaltending they need to play the style they currently do. He stopped 4 breakaways in the 3rd period alone on Saturday, and when the game was 2-1 Montreal at that point, the astute color commentator pointed out that he might have just won Washington the game. That turned out to be exactly the case.

In addition to the goaltending issue that the Leafs appear to have solved in the off season, they also had a defense issue. They were at least 2 quality defensemen short of a serious team. They have been that way for many years. Many of their younger defensemen who had promise simply did not pan out. They replaced them short term with older, steady but aging and slower defensemen. That worked at times against weaker teams but that backfired against better teams. This off season, the GM went out and paid for 2 established high end defensemen to shore up the entire unit. He let go 2 others who are clearly either finished entirely or not good enough to play on a serious contender. As this season has developed, he moved out the last young defenseman who isn't going to make a serious contribution to the team, Timothy Liljegren. In fact, he only played one of the 1st 15 games the team played. He was a liability. As such, all told, the Leafs now have the best 6 defenseman unit in the league. They don't have a star, and they don't have great players on defense, but as a collective, they have the right mix to shut down enough of the chances they will give up if they play more to score and less to neutralize. 

In fact, on that goal that beat them in the playoffs last spring, if they had a different set of defensemen on the ice on that play, it doesn't get scored. Their defenseman on that play got beat because he turned the wrong way and was too slow to be on the ice against the other team's best player. That shouldn't happen now with the ones they do have. 

The team has now been constructed to achieve what it can. If it plays to its strengths. They have scorers who are paid top dollar to score. They have solid goaltending and defense to keep enough chances the other way out of the net. They will win most games if they play to those strengths.

I get why previous coach Sheldon Keefe thought they couldn't win playing the offensive style I am suggesting they need to play to succeed. He had no confidence in the starting goalie, and even less confidence in the slow defense they had. Even still, I suggest they could have won with those variables if they played to score more. 

Do the numbers back up what I am stating here?

Let's take a look. 

As of Saturday night, Toronto has played 27 games this season, and has won 16 of them. They have lost 11 of them, 2 of those in overtime and 9 in regulation. 

In the 12 games where they have scored 4 goals or more, their record is 12-0. In other words, if they score 4 goals, they do not lose. In all the games they have lost in regulation, they have scored 2 or less goals, many only scoring 1 goal. They lost one game in overtime 4-3 to Boston. 

I will put this another way. When they score 4 or more goals, they are 12-0. When they score 3 or less, their record is 4-11. That 4-11 record would make them the worst team in the league. 12-0 would make them the best team in the league. Not every team in the league can play to just outscore the other team. The Leafs, as constructed this year, certainly can do that. And should do that. 

Even though they had flawed goaltending and defense for the last few seasons up until this one, let's take a look at their playoff games for the last 4 years, starting with last year. As mentioned, they lost to Boston in 7 games. In all those games, they never scored more than 3 goals. In fact, 3 times they scored 1 goal in those games, and lost all of those games. In the games Samsonov played, they lost 4 games and only won 1 of those. In the two games Woll played, they won both. 

The previous year, against Tampa was more telling. Admittedly, Samsonov had a very good playoff and some argue he was so good he won the series for them. I wouldn't go that far, but he was very good at times in some games. In that series, the Leafs lost the first game 7-3, a game in which they were awful. But they didn't alter their style. They won the next 3 games, 7-2, 4-3 and 5-4. Tampa's coach Jon Cooper didn't get to be a Stanley Cup winning coach without being able to read the room. Trying to outscore the Leafs as currently constructed is a bad strategy. Tampa won game five 4-2, and then lost the last game 2-1 in a very tight game that could have gone either way. The Leafs won the series by outscoring Tampa in games 2, 3 and 4. Tampa won two of the other games by keeping the Leafs to two goals. That is the only series the Leafs have won in the last 20 years. That is just simply a fact.

The previous year, 2022, the Leafs lost to Tampa in 7 games. It was more of the same story. The Leafs won games 5-0, 5-2 and 4-3. They lost games 5-3, 7-3 and 4-3, and then in the final game of the series, they lost 2-1 in a game that again could have gone either way but went Tampa's way. It went Toronto's way the next year, but playing for lucky bounces and close chances is a good way to lose a series you should win. 

In 2021, Toronto played Montreal, a vastly inferior team they should have easily beaten. They had them 3 games to 1 and were cruising along. How did they get to that point? They lost game one 2-1, then won 5-1, 2-1 and 4-0. They then lost the next 3 games 4-3, 3-2, and the last game 3-1. In other words, when they scored 4 or more goals, they won 2 games. When they scored 3 or less goals, won one game and lost 4. 

It was the same thing in 2020 against Columbus, another team they easily should have beat.

There is a perception out there that how you win games in the playoffs is by keeping games low scoring and limiting chances. That can work for some teams. Less talented teams. It has never worked for high talent, high scoring teams. Which the Leafs should be.

Let's do the math on the Leafs for the last 4 playoff years they have played. I left out the loss to Florida after they beat Tampa, but I will include that in the stats. It was more of the same I mentioned above.

When the Leafs score 4 or more goals their record is....8-0. 

When they score 3 or less goals, their record is ...6-14. 

It is what it is.

I mentioned at the start of this blog my weekly floor hockey game. Look, I get it. Nobody likes to get scored on. Even at our house league, old timers floor hockey game. Or the NHL. But winning is the goal. Scoring more goals than the other team determines the winner. If you can score a lot of goals, you should aim to do that. At times, even I, a very high end passer and scorer in my day, have tried too hard to keep the puck out of the net at the expense of taking more chances to score goals. I realize now, that unless the players on the other team are far superior than myself, that is a mistake. Given an even amount of chances, I will set up and score more than most other players. I should shoot more, pass more and take more risks to get into position to score. 

Let me ask you something, if you are a true hockey fan. Has there ever been a more exciting play than the Guy Lafleur game tying goal in the game that gave Don Cherry the moniker Grapes? I can't think of one. 

That is for many reasons, but mainly, it had to do with skating, skill, playmaking and shooting. Resulting in a goal. Not to mention the overtime goal that Yvan Lambert scored a few minutes later. There was no dump and chase. No trap. No cycle. Just skate, pass, shoot and make a play. It was also a high stakes playoff game, with the winner basically a cinch to win the Stanley Cup. Montreal rolled over the New York Rangers to win the Cup in the next round. 

Watch what happens when Lafleur passes to Lemaire after he started an end to end rush. In today's game, Lemaire would almost certainly dump the puck in and hope they could regain control for a chance in front of the net. He doesn't do that. He drops the puck back to Lafleur, he blasts a long, very accurate shot into the corner of the net. 

And strangely, a big part of the Lafleur goal was Jacques Lemaire. The player, who became a head coach, is now basically remembered for ruining hockey for a decade with his mastering of the trap style of play. Before that, Lemaire was a great two way player, but even so, he was known as a scorer and a creator of offense. The Montreal teams of those days were scoring machines and they never played any kind of defensive trap or dump and chase game. In spite of that, they won 6 Stanley Cups in the 1970s, and 4 in a row to close out the decade. 

Here is another little remembered tidbit about that game in which Lafleur scored the classic goal. The final score was 5-4, in a Game 7 of the Playoffs. Throughout that series, there were very few low scoring games. That wasn't the way that games were played then. Even if they were low scoring--which a few were, it was a result of phenomenal goaltending keeping the score low. Not from very tight checking, dump and chase hockey. The Canadians had Ken Dryden--easily the best goalie of his generation and the Bruins had Gilles Gilbert, who kept the Bruins in many of those games by making insane save after insane save. However, nobody was stopping Lafleur on that Hall of Fame goal. He was simply too good to stop in that instance. He had done the exact same thing in overtime the year before to another great Bruins goalie Gerry Cheevers from almost the same spot in Game 2--in Overtime, after Cheevers had played very well to keep Boston in the game when they were badly outplayed. 

Almost one year later, another great goal, in another great game. Another overtime game and another higher scoring game. Again, 5-4 final. To win the Stanley Cup. 

See a pattern here?

As Danny Gallivan was known to say, furious action. That was the way games were played back in those days. Before coaches like Lemaire completely took over how games were played. That is not to say that there weren't great scorers in that era. Gretzky and Lemieux were in their prime then. 

In this modern era that clearly is not the case anymore. Now, it's a coaches game. Systems. Structure. Game management. Risk reduction. Greasy goals. Puck Battles. You hear all those terms and more. What you don't hear is increased action. Focus on skill. Clever passing. Hard shots.

Trying to put a round puck into a square net. That is the crux of hockey. Used to be the crux. 

You should always try to play the best defense you can. When the other team has the puck you should defend your man, block shots, clear the zone and whatever it takes to keep the puck out of the net. But, if you are a scorer, you have to try and score. That is your role. Your job. That is what they pay you for. In many cases, they pay you a lot of money to score. Scoring is not easy. Those that can do it or help others do it should do as much of that as they can. Their role isn't to keep the game even until some lucky bounce goes their way. Their role is to generate high quality chances that will end up going in the net because of the skill level they have in doing that. Part of that is not just dumping the puck in and returning to defending. It's to make plays. Again, that doesn't mean you don't defend when that doesn't work out and the other team gets the puck. It means when you get it back you do something with it. The goal is to score more goals than the other team on that night. Every night in fact.

And, there is a secondary factor in all this. Professional hockey is also about entertainment. Nobody wants to pay $200 a seat, plus either parking or transit, dinner out, food at the game, which sets you back $300 or more, to watch two teams dump and chase all night, cycle and bang all night, and then one team wins 2-1. Every now and then it happens, but that can't be the ideal. Not if you want people to pay big money to come see you. There has to be action and scoring chances. That is what people pay to see.

And truth be told, if you are a high talent team, like say the current Maple Leafs, you are incredibly stupid to attempt to play with the goal of winning 3-2, or 2-1. All that does is allows lower talent teams the chance to win a game of lucky bounces and bang bang rebound plays. If you are those teams, you are happy to take that chance. It's the only way you can beat that team. You are playing right into their hands if you let them dictate the play in that way. 

The Leafs have long been scolded by the press and many fans for the way they structure and pay their team.

They have the big 4, which is Auston Mathews at 13 million a year, John Taveras at 11 million a year, Mitch Marner at 11 million a year, and now William Nylander at 11 million a year. That is a lot of money to pay just 4 players. In fact, it's almost half the allowable payroll under the salary cap system. Like it or not, that is what they have chosen to do. In business terms, they have allotted their capital that way. 

We could argue whether that is a good idea. I think it's not, but others don't have a problem with it. What is not up for dispute, in my view, is that if you are going to do that, you have to expect a certain type of play from those players. And that is simply because the rest of the team will not have a high enough skill level to compensate for the disproportionate amount the Big 4 are paid. In other words, the big 4 have to score a lot of goals nightly for the team to succeed. And if you pay them that way, you are fully expecting that is what will happen. 

Yet, it's not. But why?

The answer to that is very simple. The previous coach, Sheldon Keefe, and the current coach, Craig Berube, didn't want the team to play that way. They want responsible, two way play at all times. They also call it "the right way to play." Keefe even went so far as to say that they had to play that way to win in the Playoffs, and to paraphrase him, "it is what it is." Except, they didn't win in the playoffs playing that way. In fact, they lost. Just about every series. And the games they won, for the most part, were when they were scoring, as laid out previously in the blog. The one series they did win, against Tampa two years ago was the perfect example of that. That is just a fact. A fact the new coach Craig Berube rejects. 

As for Berube, let's go over him briefly. I like Berube. He is hard-nosed and he is very honest and direct and he doesn't bullshit the press about what he sees out there. In addition he will call out any player that doesn't put out the effort. That had been an issue with Keefe before letting players slide on lack of effort.

As a player, Berube went undrafted out of Junior hockey, yet went on to play 17 seasons in the NHL. That has to be respected. And it is. Primarily, he was noted as a fighter and enforcer. He is 7th all time in penalty minutes. You don't get that many penalty minutes for minor penalties. When he wasn't fighting, he was banging. Dumping and chasing, winning puck battles. The things he now likes to see out of his players when he coaches. He also played more than 1000 games which is another great achievement. With that, he holds the all time record for lowest points by any player that played 1000 games in the league. He bounced around a lot. He played for 8 different teams over the years. He certainly was never known for scoring goals or making plays, something he would fully admit.

As a coach, he has barely a winning record although it's not awful. His teams win their share, but not more than that. He has won that one Stanley Cup with the Blues, but otherwise, his teams have never advanced past the 2nd round and 3 times they have missed the playoffs entirely. You could argue that the current Leafs are the most talented team he has ever coached. Up to this year, he had coached 8 seasons, in which his team had a losing record 4 of those 8 seasons. Other than that one season when his team won the Cup, he has not been successful and has been fired twice. 

He gets his teams to play hard and tough. He was known for that as a player and he gets that out of players. But, his teams don't win against better teams deep in the playoffs. His style isn't about talent. If you believe talent wins games, he coaches to lose when the teams get more talented. Just about any team that goes deep in the playoffs is going to play hard. So, that is a non starter. The difference is who plays smarter and scores goals. 

If you look at the one Cup Berube won, a 7 game series, the Blues scored 4 goals only twice. They won both of those games, including the final game 4-1. Otherwise, they were 2-3 in the rest. It's just how it goes. 

One of the problems in the modern era is the insane focus on winning in the playoffs. Look, there is nothing wrong with winning at the highest level. It's a good thing, and I get that. What is wrong is saying that the regular season doesn't matter, and that you will be completely judged based on how far you go in the playoffs. 

As such, since the Leafs have a horrendous track record in the playoffs for the last 20 years, they chose Berube to fix that. And his thought was....screw the regular season. Screw entertaining the fans. Just set a system that will win in the playoffs.

Unfortunately, that fails on two levels. First, lousy games to watch for the entire regular season. Nuff said on that.

Second, the team is not set up to play that way anyway and are better served trying to score more to win games, knowing that also means they will get scored on more. That is not how Berube sees it though.

He feels the team needs to just throw the puck on net, bully their way to get rebounds and pound it in. Now, if that is the case, what do you need Mathews, Marner and Nylander for? You can pay at least half as much and get many players to do that. 

I'm not saying there isn't a time to do that every now and then, but that is not a strategy that works with the personnel the team has assembled and bet their future on. It's like hiring a bunch of PHd's and then telling them to cut lawns for a living. It's just foolish.

The issue is not whether this way of playing will work. They are in 2nd place and possibly in first place by the end of the season. The issue is whether it's the right thing to do. To just focus on what wins games in the playoffs, and go out of your way to play not entertaining hockey in the regular season, while still charging a lot of money for not providing the product they claim to sell to the customer. That is the issue.

If I pay to watch or attend a game, I want to see stars like Marner, Mathews, Nylander and anyone else who can make plays....make plays. I'm not there to watch them defend. Nor do I want to watch all night to see a 2-1 game decided on a dump in, chase, rebound, cycle or bang bang goal at the net. That will happen, but it shouldn't be the norm or the goal or the overall strategy. 

Lemaire. The trap. 

Now they call it the low event game. I will translate that into real talk. No event game. Basically, don't skate. don't shoot, don't make any turnovers. Don't pass. don't shoot. Just dump it in, get it out, dump it back. bang against each other on the boards. Trap. Rinse, repeat. Hope for a lucky goal or bounce. Coaches call it being patient. 

Craig Berube calls it....playing the right way. That is a term you hear all the time now. But is it right to play that way, in a game that is played to entertain the customer?

Look I get it. Leafs fans are starving for a Stanley Cup contender and winner. There are probably a few who don't care if they win every game 1-0 to achieve that. But to expect most fans to watch boring, low event hockey all season, and pay top dollar for that ignores what the customer is looking for. 

So, what ended up happening at Food Basics on that night? There was one line, 6 to 8 customers in front of me, 3 of which had very large loads, one customer had a mispriced item that needed to be price checked. We all stood there and waited for that to happen, and all of us were getting very angry and frustrated. The cashier, who is a very good one, could see all that, but there is nothing she can do. She is well aware of the attitude at this store, and other Food Basics stores I have ever shopped at. That attitude is to save $100 on the night in salaries and make the customer angry in the process. That is okay with them. It's been going on at least 20 years and only gets worse, not better every year. 

Food Basics is never as busy as No Frills. Why is that? Because customers would rather shop at No Frills, so it's busier. They hire more cashiers and the customer gets a better experience. And, they come back. Food Basics gets worse every year, loses more customers every year, and just tries to cut more corners because of all of that. It's a vicious cycle. A cycle that is wholly unnecessary. If their answer to that is to offer a rewards program, they are clearly out of touch with the average customer that shops at their store.

It's no different than tailoring your entire hockey product to a few weeks at the end, and in some cases, less than a week for very good teams like the Maple Leafs. You will lose more customers willing to be loyal and paying than you will gain. It goes directly against the happy medium. 

When Connor McDavid was is town last month there is a big buzz about that. And it's not because he is expected to check and block shots. It's because he is a world class skater, goal scorer and player. That is what the fans want to see. High end skill and playmaking. And hitting too. I don't deny that. But what they don't want is dump and chase, traps, slow the game down. Make it a defensive struggle. Nobody is paying to see that. When I was growing up, there was that same buzz about Lafleur, and then Gretzky. 

The customer wants action. Fast action. At Food Basics, all we want is fair prices and fair service. Rewards are great, but they all can give you rewards. It's a non-starter factor. 

The Leafs dramatically upgraded their defense over the summer. They brought in Chris Tanev and Oliver Ekman Larsen and some other minor defenders. They did that so the skill players can do what they are paid to do. If you are going to win 6-4 hockey games, you need your goalie to make enough big stops and your defensemen to stop as much as they can. After that, it's up to the highly paid scorers to score. As Jake McCabe put it before the big game against Edmonton and McDavid. He was speaking about what role McCabe and Tanev play on the Leafs. 

We relish these chances to go against other team’s top lines. It is our job to keep the puck out of the net. We will continue to do that tonight.

It isn't McCabe or Tanev's role to create offense. That is not what they are there for. That is the job Mathews, Marner, Nylander and Taveras are paid for. And have a track record of doing. 

It just makes no sense to pay 4 players all over 10 million a year, and then try to win games 2-1. That is not the team you developed.

It just seems the coach they hired is not using the players they have locked up in a way that makes any sense at all. Which isn't surprising. That is the coach he is, that is the player he was, and that is what he likely told the Leafs he would do when he took the job. It just isn't going to work. 

They upgraded their defense, not so they could win games 2-1, but so they could win games 5-3 or 6-4. They needed to do that. They needed more reliable goalies. They went out and got that. Now, they have to play to their identity. Or, they will end up exactly where they have been the last few years. Out of the playoffs in the first round or two, and losing the last game 2-1 on a lucky bounce that didn't go their way. 

Do Leafs fans crave playoff success? Absolutely. Do they want that at the expense of exciting hockey to watch? I don't think so. We will find out. But for me, I believe the Leafs are going down the wrong road and have been for a few years. They assembled a talented group of high end scoring stars, but they have hired coaches who insist that those players have to sacrifice offense to play more defense than they need to. That hasn't worked out in the playoffs, and it never will. All it will do is make the fans realize they gave up entertainment value during the regular season on the promise it will pay off in the playoffs, and it never has. That isn't pleasing your customer on any level. It's just bad business. Plain and simple. 

Why top execs get paid what they do.

 Everyone is important in a business or organization. From the top decision makers, to the guy in the warehouse who handles the product and everyone in between. What each person gets paid basically boils down to supply and demand, and market value worth.

I know many don't like to hear this, but it's still the truth. While everyone is important, not everyone is as valuable. That is why the top CEO makes the kind of money that a top CEO does. While working in the warehouse is an important job, there are millions of people who can do that job. If you leave, you are pretty much easily replaced. If the top CEO leaves, and he has top talent, replacing him with someone who is less talented can have grave consequences, as I will point out at the end of this blog. It's a very high risk job which can make or break a company.

https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/article/gm-kyle-davidson-expected-blackhawks-to-be-further-prior-to-coaching-change/

I'm not here to glorify the paying of insane sums of money to CEOs and execs. I'm just going to point out why that happens.

Yesterday, Luke Richardson was fired as the coach of the Chicago Black Hawks. Here is what the GM said as to his reasoning.


"the team has not performed to the level the organization expected...You have to be realistic with what you're expecting and what you demand out of a group, but I don't believe this is a last-place group,”

-Davidson told reporters Friday morning in Chicago.

Is that true? I'm sure Davidson believes that. I do not.

Two of the players Davidson signed in the off season were TJ Brodie and Tyler Bertuzzi. Both players who played on the Toronto Maple Leafs last year.
Brodie was a good player for 3 years for the Leafs. Two years ago he declined sharply. Last year he was awful, and couldn't defend his man at all. He was clearly not an NHL level defenseman anymore. By the end of the year, he didn't even get to play. He wasn't good enough anymore. Bertuzzi had a great playoff 2 years ago with Boston. That got him a fat, one year contract with the Leafs. He was okay, but certainly no difference maker. He was no factor at all in the playoffs. Chicago decided to give him a very fat contract with term, while the Leafs walked away.
Neither of Brodie or Bertuzzi has done anything to help Chicago be any better. Arguably worse.
What did Leafs GM Brad Treleving do? He let Brodie and Bertuzzi walk away. In the meantime, he locked up homegrown Bobby Mcmann for 2 years at a fraction of the cost of Bertuzzi. Same player, less cost. He found Simon Benoit for free last year, tried him out, and locked him up for 2 years at less than Brodie would cost. Benoit is no Bobby Orr, but at this point, he is far more valuable and useful than Brodie, who is on his last legs at best. Benoit basically took Brodies spot last year on the Leafs.
Davidson also traded Jake McCabe two years ago to the Leafs when they had another GM. As it turns out, the Leafs stole McCabe for a draft pick, and then traded a defenseman they didn't need to Washington and got the identical pick back, which they then took highly coveted prospect Easton Cowan with, who will eventually play the role Bertuzzi did with the Leafs. Treliving didn't make the McCabe trade, but he was wise enough to lock him up long term this year. What did Davidson do? In addition to trading McCabe, he also decided that Chicago would pay a large portion of his salary while he played for Toronto. That is money he could have used now to get a far better player than Brodie to help the current team.
It's easy for Davidson to blame the coach. It's easy for anyone with a brain to see Davidson is the problem. He makes terrible decisions and hurts his franchise. Chicago is dead last in the NHL. The Leafs are near the top of the NHL. Decisions and performance matter. There is monetary value in those who can make the right choices. A lot of value.
The most important employee in the current professional sports environment is the GM. What they do makes and breaks the team. Coaches can't make TJ Brodie regain his legs. They can't make Tyler Bertuzzi be the 30 goal scorer he is paid to be when he is an 18 to 20 goal scorer.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/ousted-intel-ceo-pat-gelsinger-is-leaving-the-company-with-millions/ar-AA1vdkuK?ocid=BingNewsSerp


Five years ago, Intel was still the king. Now, they are borderline a worthless company and their CEO was just removed. Five years ago Nvidia was a mid level company that made a huge bet on AI. Now, Nvidia is one of the most valuable companies on the planet. One CEO made the right call, the other screwed that up.

Whether we like it or not, that is why they get paid what they do. Blaming others for your mistakes, as Davidson just did, shows you don't own up to your own mistakes. My opinion is this. Davidson won't be the GM for Chicago much longer. A year at most. He might not even survive until April. He is a terrible judge of talent and value for the dollar. He is grasping at straws at this point. He is hopeless.

I do my own investing and make my own decisions with all of that. I understand that not everybody wants to do that or can do that. But what I do know is that if there comes a time I don't want to bother doing the work it takes to make money investing, I certainly would never take advice from some low level employee at the bank. If they actually knew anything about the market and investing, they would not be working at the bank, but investing their own money full time or working for a high end investment firm. I will be glad to pay 3 percent or even a bit more to get expert advice by proven talent that is rewarded as such because they have a track record of getting it right.

I dont know the name of anybody that works at Apple making the products. I do know the name Steve Jobs. He made that company what it became. Twice in fact. Ditto for Bill Gates. Ditto for the CEO of Nvidia. I know all their names. I want to know who is looking after my investment if I make an investment. If I owned the Chicago Black Hawks I know that the man in charge, Kyle Davidson is going to destroy my value by undermining the organization with terrible decisions that other talent simply would not make. That is why he will be gone shortly and somebody with a better track record will be brought in and paid a much bigger salary. That is why top execs get paid what they do to do what they do. They are worth the money they make, for the investors.