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It is always a bit surreal, watching the hours tick by on NHL trade deadline day. The battling sports networks, the deadly earnest insiders on their cellphones and the endless analysis of deals, most of which, when the dust settles, won't really mean much at all.
But in the realm of pure perverse entertainment, has there ever been anything stranger than watching John Ferguson on the day when his failings as the general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs were laid absolutely bare, still clinging doggedly to his dreams?
It is clear to everyone by now the path on which Ferguson embarked before he was finally fired in January could hardly have been more disastrous.
Once upon a time, the Maple Leafs enjoyed the luxury of patching over their organizational incompetence with money.
Even if the only place to spend was on players past their prime, even if it could only be a temporary solution, at least it was something and provided the basis for several nice little playoff runs that fell short of producing championships, but allowed the paying customers' fantasies to remain intact.
They reluctantly surrendered that cash advantage when they signed on to the league's new salary cap system after the 2004-05 lockout.
It certainly wasn't all bad, at least for the Leafs' owners, who were forced to pockets tens of millions of dollars in profits they would have otherwise squandered on player salaries.
But any cap system in any sport rewards clever drafting and development and requires maximum payroll flexibility. Clubs can't afford to get caught holding diminishing assets, or those whose value a team wildly overestimated in the first place.
The Leafs had an awful draft record long before Ferguson arrived. But in a new system where mistakes were much harder to correct, he locked the team into a series of expensive no-trade deals with players who were past their prime or simply weren't good enough — and then deluded himself into thinking they were.
Every Toronto fan knows the names, the terms and the dollar figures all too well by now — and knows Cliff Fletcher was hauled out of happy retirement to clean up the mess in advance of the hiring of a new general manager.
And now they know he couldn't accomplish that, at least by trade. Getting rid of Hal Gill, Wade Belak and Chad Kilger yesterday in return for a handful of draft choices hardly equals a clean slate.
Perhaps there was an element of nostalgic wishful thinking involved in Fletcher's hiring, but still it's hard to believe he failed yesterday from any lack of trying or lack of acumen, given his crystal-clear mandate.
Last night, Ferguson and his replacement were sniping at each other through the magic of television, trying to offload the blame for this fine mess. If the choice is between Fletcher-as-John-Turner — "I had no choice" — and Ferguson's continuing assertions that things aren't nearly as hopeless as they appear, it's hard not to side with the elder statesman.
Now comes the uncomfortable business of buyouts and demotions where possible, with lingering cap impact, and with nothing coming back in return.
Even a fresh start seems at least another season or two away, and the possibility of again contending for something? Well, after 41 years and counting in the wilderness, what's another half-decade or so?
In his new role as TSN talking head, Fergie could have taken a relatively easy and semi-plausible out: The franchise's dysfunctional ownership, unwilling to endure short-term pain for long-term gain and unwilling to let familiar fan favourites walk away, had placed him in an impossible bind. He was just following orders.
There's got to be at least some truth to that. Instead, listening to him yesterday describing Gill as though he were Zdeno Chara, pointing out how many wins goaltender Andrew Raycroft recorded after the disastrous deal that brought him to Toronto, talking (at least early in the day) about how much interest there was in the all of those guys to whom he had awarded no-trade contracts, it was painfully clear he still believes what he said when this season began — that he had assembled a team capable of eventually challenging for the Stanley Cup.
What they're capable of, with all of the pressure off now, with all of the trade rumours done, is making a nice, comfortable run to about 11th place in the Eastern Conference — just far enough to queer the Maple Leafs' chances of securing the No. 1 pick in the 2008 draft lottery — and then booking early spring tee times for the third year in succession.
That's what they were and that's what they are. As with beating an addiction, sometimes the hardest step is the first one, acknowledging uncomfortable truths others find so obvious.
