Great One Opts For Seppuku Over MLSE

I have to admit to a certain morbid fascination with the Leafs continuing search for a new general manager. It's like passing a train wreck, or an incredibly ugly person. You don't want to, but you can't help but stare.

To recap: MLSE hung the last one out to dry, spending most of last summer trying to recruit a "mentor" for him before finally giving up (because no one wanted the job), but not before calling him "a mistake" two months into the season, which, of course, didn't stop them from keeping him on for another two. After finally, mercifully euthanizing firing JFJ, 116 year old Cliff Fletcher was brought in on an "interim" basis with the sole task of rebuilding a once proud franchise. But that didn't work out so well either, what with no trade clauses and a predilection for talking to potted ferns having a somewhat deleterious effect on one's ability to fulfill one's mandate. And yet, the "interim" still sits in the big corner office arguing with the ghost of Conn Smythe, while the search for his replacement continues.

So how bad has it gotten in Toronto? Putting aside Brian Burke's baffling insistence on talking himself out of any job for the moment, you know things are bad when the greatest hockey player in the history of everything holds a press conference to A) preemptively refuse a job he hasn't been publicly offered yet and B) prefers staying in Phoenix, the NHL's ode to apathetic mediocrity to tilting at the windmill that is the Byzantine corporate culture of MLSE.

You can cross the Great One's name off the list of potential candidates to take over the hockey operations of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Wayne Gretzky will be staying in Phoenix.

"I have always been a big fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs, and wish them luck in the future. Right now my focus is on the Phoenix Coyotes and developing our young talent"

Loosely translated? "I would rather have Janet gouge out my testes with a rusty ice cream scoop than come within a hundred miles of anything to do with Richard Peddie, Larry Tanenbaum, or that God forsaken ownership fuck-up that is Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment!" Sounds reasonable enough.

Gretzky's Focus Remains In Phoenix, Not Toronto [TSN.ca]