So I'm heading to a concert tonight (Incubus and not Coldplay, thankfully) and as always, I would listen to their albums to get hyped up for it. This morning I was listening to their greatest hits/rarities & b-sides album, Monuments & Melodies and the song Love Hurts came on. As the chorus started to play, I thought of our favourite Czech.
I can only imagine what Tomas must be thinking. For 10 seasons, this man has poured his blood, sweat and tears into this great organization and what does he get in return? Fans demanding he be traded for some young, unproven talent. I have a friend who told me Kaberle was dead to him because we could have gotten Jeff Carter for him. I don't know about you but I clearly remembered when those rumours broke out and I hated the trade. Carter was an unproven talent who showed no signs of being the 40+ goal scorer that he would later become. It's easy to make a trade in hindsight. If we all made deals in hindsight, Stojanov would have never left the Canucks, Gilmour would have never came to the Leafs and we would have never had to see Raycroft don the blue and white (okay scratch that one, that was a horrible trade at the time too).
It's okay to be hurting, Tomas because like the song says, love hurts but sometimes it's a good hurt because it let's you feel alive. I just wanted you to know that we still love you and even if it feels like the whole city of Toronto is against you, you will always have myself, eyebleaf, the general and many others in the Barilkosphere in your corner. We will fuck up Cam Janssen if you need us to, just give us the sign.
We're going to need you to lead this young team. I just hope we can put all this trade talk nonsense behind us and you can go out there next season and do your thing. I look forward to seeing you weave in and out of traffic ever so fluidly when you rush end to end; I can't wait to see you put the puck on a tee for whichever defenceman is fortunate enough to be paired with you; and I'm dying to see you go 4 for 4 again in next year's shooting accuracy competition. Simply put, nobody does it better.