Beseiged Leafs GM makes desperate bid for Tavares

GM John Ferguson Jr. is under fire from his team's ownership as well as local media. AP

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There is the sour scent of desperation about John Ferguson's latest gambit with the Toronto Maple Leafs, like the musky odor of a teenager who is dialing the number of the fetching girl from chemistry class to ask her to the homecoming dance although he is certain she is way out of his league.

Ferguson, the Toronto general manager, is day-to-day like all of us. Only more so. Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, the entity that runs this cashbox of a franchise, had been kicking around the idea of bringing in a president to oversee the hockey team, like it did with Bryan Colangelo and its NBA Raptors -- or worse, bringing in a senior hockey man to mentor Ferguson, a demeaning idea for someone who has been on the job since August, 2003.

For a franchise now 40 years into its rebuilding program, the heat has been turned up on a GM who has overpaid wildly for his defense, signed ineffectual free agents, mortgaged a piece of his future to trade for goalie Vesa Toskala and failed to draft or develop a successor for Mats Sundin, the redoubtable 36-year-old center who recently set Maple Leafs career records for goals and points.

With same old same old not an option, the embattled Ferguson -- the Toronto Sun called for his firing earlier this week -- needed to think outside the box. If he didn't, the only box Ferguson would need is the mailbox where his unemployment checks would be delivered.

Enter John Tavares.

If you don't know the name, you should. Tavares scored 72 goals for the Oshawa Generals last season and is off to another torrid start in the Ontario Hockey League. Although he was hardly dominant in the eight-game Super Series against the Russian juniors in September, he would certainly be among the top three picks -- and a possible No. 1 -- in the 2008 NHL Draft if he hadn't been born Sept. 20, five days after cutoff date for eligibility. (Hey, stuff happens. Alexander Ovechkin was born Sept. 17, two days too late.)

Rather than play another season of junior hockey in 2008-09, the representatives for Tavares, now 17, would have liked the NHL to grant him an exception, making him eligible for the draft next June. Because that won't happen, Tavares seemed to have two options: return to Oshawa or consider going to a European pro league for a year.

Then Ferguson floated Plan C, a desperate move that might look like a million-to-one shot but in reality is wildly creative and not all that far-fetched.

This would be the deal: MLSE would offer Tavares a contract with the Marlies, its American Hockey League affiliate that plays in Ricoh Coliseum, a five-minute drive from the Air Canada Centre. NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said the league would have no objection. The AHL might, however. In 2001, it decided to bar players under the age of 18, using the same Sept. 15 cutoff. MLSE could forge ahead with a legal challenge here. But if the NHL has no objections, it would make sense if the AHL simply waived its rule in this case.

Now, if this were simply a cash-grab by MLSE, which certainly would love a gate attraction for its minor league team, Tavares-for-one-year would be a worthless exercise in short-term thinking. The real reason the hockey world is taking notice of the rumblings in Toronto is that Ferguson has to be thinking of the Marlies as a back door into the Maple Leafs. After a mutually profitable relationship between player and organization, maybe, on the eve of the draft in June 2009, Tavares announces he will play for only one team: Toronto.

Almost a quarter of a century after the presumptive top pick in the draft, Craig Simpson, let it be known that he wouldn't go to Toronto (and the Leafs had to take Wendel Clark), it would be sweet irony if somebody actually said that Toronto would be his only choice.

Why would anyone pull that power play? Simple. Toronto, close to home for Tavares, also offers a wonderful base for ancillary income and marketing opportunities. You can make the extra scratch playing anywhere -- think Wayne Gretzky in Edmonton or Sidney Crosby in Pittsburgh -- but being king of the hockey universe is easier when its throne room is your backyard.

Of course, a draft-eligible player has forced a team's hand before -- John Elway, Eric Lindros, Eli Manning. But it would really be intriguing if a player could force the hand of every team.

Look, this situation is littered with ifs and maybes and legalities and howevers. Tavares can simply ride the wave in Oshawa and then submit to a process that has been collectively bargained. He can stay a million miles away from a volatile Leafs situation that, based on the quality of the young talent and depressing history, doesn't offer the prospect of a Stanley Cup parade any time soon.

But after a mostly disappointing tenure -- and I thought Ferguson was exactly the bright mind the Maple Leafs needed when they hired him -- he has shown the audacity to roil the NHL waters. If everything miraculously falls into place, maybe Ferguson belatedly will make this heritage franchise a force on the ice as well as on the spreadsheet.

Not every Hail Mary pass falls incomplete, does it?