Honestly, it’s enough to make you want to pull on a Montreal Canadiens sweater.

Trade deadline Day 2008 passed on Feb. 26 with the Toronto Maple Leafs only able to unload Hal Gill, Chad Kilger and Wade Belak.

But then again, like many in the Leafs Nation, maybe I was expecting too much of Cliff Fletcher.

With the day of player movement concluded, I’m just left wondering why John Ferguson Jr. hasn’t been hog-tied and run out of town on the noon stagecoach.

Hired only weeks before the trade deadline, it was Fletcher’s hands that were tied by the contracts signed, sealed and delivered by Ferguson.

Many of these multi-year deals were frilled up with little red bows in the form of no-trade clauses.
It ensures the shadow that is John Ferguson will hang over Toronto for a number of years to come.

You can hardly blame Ferguson for accepting the money The Sports Network (TSN) offered him to appear on their panel on trade deadline day.

But he had to know he could become the target of some verbal blows by his fellow co-hosts and that’s exactly what happened in the final hour before Tuesday’s trade deadline expired.

Before show host James Duthie steered the trade talk in another direction, I had to wonder if Ferguson was five seconds away from stripped naked and burned at the stake in the studio.

Leaf fans would have loved to perform the task for free, or sold tickets towards a charity fundraiser at Nathan Phillips Square.

So anxious was Ferguson to prove to his superiors Richard Peddie and the Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment Board of Directors that he was making dramatic moves, that he decided signing Mats Sundin, Bryan McCabe, Pavel Kubina, Darcy Tucker and Tomas Kaberle to contracts where they held the hammer when it came to potential trades was the way to go.

So desperate was Ferguson to hold onto his job that he ultimately damaged the team he was instructed to lead.

And long after he has signed on with another job in a hockey capacity, his fingerprints will remain all over the Maple Leafs lineup.

Don’t kid yourself.

Ferguson will land another hockey job within the National Hockey League.

As one longtime NHL watcher noted to me not so long ago, the league remains an ‘old boys club’ and longtime bonds are hard to break.

How else do you explain the likes of Mike Keenan, Ken Hitchcock, Marc Crawford and others going from one team to another with very little in the way of Stanley Cup wins to show for their work?

Strong hockey minds all, but what have they done lately?

On trade day, Fletcher promised the Maple Leafs would be a dramatically different looking team by the middle of this summer.

I sincerely hope he is right for the sake of those of us who have been waiting 41 years for ‘Stanley’ to the come into the Maple Leaf fold in Toronto.

But then again, if he’s talking about adding the Bob and Doug MacKenzie along with the Trailer Park Boys to the roster, maybe we’re all too dense to realize we’re cheering for a team that thinks all their fans are too stupid to know better.

Gosh, I hate it when someone insults my intelligence.

And right now, it’s being tested to the maximum.

What’s next Cliffy?

How about trading Turk Broda?

Oh, I forgot, he has the ultimate no movement clause.

- Mike Dodd is the sports reporter for The Midland Mirror and Orillia Today. Contact him at mdodd@simcoe.com.