It seems that every time that somebody signs a contract with the Leafs, gets traded here, gets drafted here, or even stops in Toronto on Vacation, there are people who will scream “Makes sense, he’s a Brian Burke type player”. In fact, we’ve heard this about practically every single player that’s come into the organization since Burke was hired. Do I personally believe that there’s such thing as a prototypical Burke-type player? Actually, I don’t. I don’t think that any general manager is dumb enough to only go after players of a certain blueprint, and to ignore anybody else. I’d think that Burke would be going for the best talent at the best value at any time, without looking at anything else.

Regardless, I’m the exception in this thought. From experience, the majority of people actually disagree, and do think there is an ideal player somewhere. So, in typical me fashion, I’ve whipped up a chart in an effort to find a player so average, he screams Brian Burke.

My Charts (One for Forward, one for Defence) use the following variables with bonuses (Green is +1, Red 0)

- What number does the player wear? If its within 5 numbers of the average, green.
- How old is the player? If they’re within 2 years of age, green.
- Where are they born? If they’re on the same continent of the majority, green.
- What position do they play? If you’re of the most popular forward position, green. All defenceman get a gimmie.
- How tall is the player? You must be the same height as the average to attain the green.
- How much does the player weigh? Within 10 pounds for the green.
- What handedness is your shot? Green means you’re in the majority.
- How many years have you played? (Only start counting from the first year over 25 games). If within a year of the average, green.
- How many points per game do you get? Being in the middlemost 5 gets you there.
- The same rule as above goes for Penalty Minutes per game. (Truculence!!1111)

After that, the greens are combined to see how typical you are. Yes, I know some of these stats are really outrageous, but I wanted to have a bunch of distinctive stats, and they’re the most indicative of Burke leaning towards a specific pattern, as silly as jersey number, handedness, and all of that may be.

That said, here are the charts. We’ll start at forward…

Some interesting stuff here.

- That forward core is YOUNG. Colton Orr the oldest at 28? Mindblowing.
- This team needs left wingers like Eskimos need fire. Luca Caputi is the only natural Left Wing on the roster.
- Not a single european foward shoots right handed.
- That average points per game leaves a lot to be desired…thats about a 30-35 point pace from most of the.
- The penalty minute average is wildly altered by Rosehill and Orr.
- Forwards are rather cheap in terms of cap hit.
- Mikhail Grabovski and Fredrik Sjostrom are the most off-from-the-norm players on this list. Makes sense, Grabo seems to be the most pure-offensive, Sjostrom seems to be the most defensive out of the bunch, so their stats are off from the rest.

With all of that said, it looks like John Mitchell is our Burke type forward! Which kind of makes sense. He’s a chippy 2 way forward who spent most of his year playing between lines 2 and 3, and has no real distinctive features in his bio stats – a 25 year old Canadian guy in a typical hockey players body? Colour me shocked that he’s the most average forward here.

On to defence…

More of note.

- Jersey numbers for defence really do seem to avoid the 10-20 range for the most part, leading to the average only scooping up 1 player.
- While older than the forwards, our average defenceman should just be hitting their prime, which is good to see.
- The defence vs. forward size gap is a lot less than I thought it would be – the defenceman merely having a bit more weight to them.
- No Euro Right Handed Shots continues here. I wonder if this is a pattern league wide?
- The defence seem to be more responsible with penalties, though I do think the fact that the Fighting Majors largely reside up front is the reasoning.
- Eight defencemen and the average is 3.47 million? If you saw the Hjalmarsson offer sheet and said “3.5 for a #4 defencman? That’s a lot.” you have no excuses here. This core needs to shed some salary, badly.
- Carl Gunnarsson is the most unique, probably because he’s still a younger player that unlike most of the core plays a pure offensive game at the moment. Remember, Uniqueness nor Averageness is not an indication of quality, so don’t go “BUT GUNNARSSON DOESN’T SUCK!!!” because I agree.

And finally, our prototypical player is a guy that Burke originally acquired years ago in Anaheim, and had come with him here, Francois Beauchemin.  Same thing kinda goes as with Mitchell – he’s a typical sized defenceman, and he plays both offensively and defensively, leading to no really distinctive stats.

That said, we have to come up with our answer for who the prototypical Burke player is. I’m leaving this one up to you. Is it Mitchell? Is it Beauchemin? Is it someone else? Does the entire concept seem silly? Leave a comment with your thoughts. Personally, I’m leaning towards a mix of Mitchell, but this is still silly, but I’m not really concrete on it and would like to hear some opinions.

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