I like how upfront he was. I didn't like how much he loved himself. It led to him being unable to recognize the dire straits the Leafs were in as a team and instead of blowing it up - which he had carte blanche to do - he tried to make something out of nothing.
The Kessel deal doesn't even really rank in the top-5 worst deals for me . . .yeah, 8th overall and 2nd overall (and 32nd) . . . I have this feeling that if the Leafs hadn't have traded for Kessel they'd have used the #2 pick to take Gudbranson because 6'5 / 220lb top-5 defensemen don't grow on trees . . and they'd have probably used #32 on Brad Ross. The next year they'd have stunk worse than the #8 spot but would've probably taken Oleksiak at #3.
If there was one thing Burke really didn't go a great job of, it was drafting. He was a tireless self-promoter and a disproportionate number of his trades were actually pretty good.
But his timing just plain sucked - no matter what. Let's say we completely bottomed out and started the rebuild - and I've mentioned this here before - we would have been in competition with the Edmonton Oilers for some of the most overrated #1 picks in the past 20 years: Hall, Nugent-Hopkins, Yakupov . . . then you had MacKinnon, Ekblad, McDavid, Matthews . . . but our rebuild would have started on flimsier ground with those guys.
You could argue that Burke being an impatient idiot actually made the team better because they finally got to rebuild under Lou and got Matthews and Marner for it (Nylander, I'm pretty positive, was drafted by Nonis when he replaced Burke).
- Monkeypunk
Burke did what every GM since Ballard died had done: went for the quick fix instead of a slow, steady process.
Trading for Kessel was perhaps the dumbest trade in the Leafs' history. He sacrificed the future to try to build a team around a one-way winger. And then he didn't give Kessel anyone to play with.
1st year of Kessel, our centres were Stajan, Grabovski and Bozak.
2nd year: Grabovski, Bozak and Tim Brent.
3rd year: Grabovski, Tim Connolly, Matthew Lombardi, Dave Steckel
4th year (Burkie's last): A young Kadri, Bozak, Grabovski, Jay McClement
And let's not forget that on July 1, 2009, Cammalleri and his agent literally went to MLSE offices to ask for a deal. Burke wasn't there because he was in Sweden trying to sign Jonas Gustavsson.