Coaches Will Be Crucial

Brian Burke has now pretty much wrapped up his off season work and we all aware of the signings and deals that Burke has made in his first off season as GM. The question now is how will Ron Wilson bring these guys together to form one strong cohesive unit? Will the new players buy into Ron Wilson’s system and sometimes his upfront and bitter behaviour with players?

These are all things that will be of serious interest amongst Maple Leafs’ fans. Ron Wilson is known to focus on the defensive side of the game heavily and now he has pretty much a dream defensive six and he will have to show his magic to make them unbeatable. Ron Wilson is certainly a perfectionist and he doesn’t like any laziness on the ice and he makes sure he gets his message across. This really shouldn’t be a problem because classy guys like Komisarek and Beauchemin rarely show up to a game unprepared. Ron Wilson’s work will certainly be cut out on the offensive side of things where he has barely any star power to work with. Of course a coach can’t have everything but I am sure he is happy that the players he has are known to work hard for the team they play for and they all give 110% on the ice.

Ron Wilson will be crucial this year in the development of the youngsters and seeing from the work he did last year on the rookies we shouldn’t be worried to much about Wilson. I might not be expecting results from the Leafs but I certainly would like to see some hustle and effort along with certain plans being used on the ice effectively to shut down a team. The Leafs aren’t fooling anyone with the fact that we won’t be winning games by huge margins and this is why it will be crucial that all the stay at home defensemen we have accumalated show their skills every single shift.

One thing you have to love about Ron Wilson is the fact that due to his perfectionist mindframe he rarely misses the details thus resulting in the Leafs’ never being behind the eight ball. Also the way he picks out players who aren’t trying their hardest or aren’t doing things properly is fantastic and a trait that many coaches sometimes don’t perfect thus resulting in losing careers. Minor details are key and the assistant coaches are crucial, the staff last year was solid so this shouldn’t be a problem. The addition of the goalie coach Francois Allaire hopefully will bring some strength to Toskala’s goaltending and with luck elevate Gustavvson into our future starting goalie.

These are all things that we will need to watch out for because these coaches will have to step up the game if the Leafs expect this rebuild to be successful.