September 1996
by Barry Stagg
CLIFF FLETCHER
With sixty years of life behind him and better than thirty years of that spent running big league hockey clubs, Cliff Fletcher has seen and felt it all as far as the fortunes of a professional sports executive. The current "hot season" that this Toronto hockey boss is experiencing is just on a par with the criticisms and complaints he absorbed in St. Louis, Atlanta and Calgary. The lot of a hockey boss is one where competition exists not only on the ice but also in the office arena where rivals, potential successors and sycophantic sports writers vie for favourable shooting positions from which to wound the current king of the proverbial hill.
Fletcher has all the boo birds chirping at him this summer. He has off-loaded a bunch of high paid yesterday's men and he has signed only grinding type forwards to fill out the training camp roster. The whining and second-guessing that go to fill the sports pages and the electronic drone- fests are oriented toward suggestions that Cliff is also yesterday's general manager. According to the experts in the Leaf press box, Fletcher was hoodwinked by Mike Milbury in the Wendel Clark deal and he was trumped by the San Jose braintrust in losing defenceman Todd Gill for checker Jamie Baker. The loss of first round picks to the Islanders and the Flyers is seen as an indication of the onset of managerial senility. The need to produce a decent team in October is vital.
The lads and lassies of the sports departments are going against a fellow who has made a hockey fortune by seeing the next trend in the sport before the general manager across the rink. Remember it was Fletcher who signed and played the first Russian player to actually take a spot in a regular lineup. That was in his Calgary Flames era while he was building the 1989 Stanley Cup winner. Further back down the line, it was Fletcher's astute drafting and trading that made the expansion Atlanta flames competitive from the very outset of their existence. A comparison to the present day Florida Panthers is quite apt. The hand of Fletcher's old expansion rival Bill Torrey is clearly visible in the Florida success story.
The thing about veteran dealers like the Toronto boss is that they do alter their approach as the atmosphere of the game changes. Think back to the early Gretzky era of 1979-1980. Then the game was dominated by veterans like Marcel Dionne, Bryan Trottier and Guy Lafleur. However when the teenage Gretzky overwhelmed the NHL record book the management leaders rapidly went to young virtually junior age teams. Now the league is going through the end of the Gretzky era. No matter how he plays with his fellow Oiler alumnus in New York, the Great One's days of pure dominance of a hockey rink are behind him. Time has reached his muscles and reflexes like it took its toll on the stars that he eclipsed.
Fletcher may have already seen that the way to success in the early post-Wayne times is through young, hungry checking squads. This is the Florida formula and it looks like the Leafs will have more than a few youngsters mixed with their veteran core. Toronto is no longer stuck with too many aging snipers who cannot be expected to defy time any more than has Gretzky. Checkers Baker, Scott Pearson and Mark Kolesar will be the sloggers to lead the team in sweat and effort and tough, tenacious play. That is the predicted trend for the 1996-1997 season.
The coming hockey season will see plenty of fine veteran snipers move ever closer to the sunset stage of their careers. Leaf castoffs Mike Gartner in Phoenix and Dave Andreychuk in New Jersey will be hard pressed to maintain their level of scoring . The likelihood is that both will become power play specialists as their defensive shortcomings become increasingly obvious in their inevitably losing struggle with plain old muscle decay.
This sets the scene for the renewal of the Fletcher legend in Toronto. After all the brain power of a canny hockey trader does not go as quickly as the legs and shoulders of the on ice troops. The interesting comparison may be between the sniping comments of the summer hockey stories and the inevitably fawning cheer leading that will flow from the word processors of the Toronto hockey commentators if Fletcher's Leafs are checking and skating and hitting their rivals into the loss column in the new year.
Until next month: Be proud, be prosperous.