It wouldn’t be a Maple Leafs season without a little bit of controversy, right? Today, the Leafs announced who would be serving as the team’s alternate captains to team captain Dion Phaneuf. Not surprisingly, two defensemen were chosen. Surprisingly, one of them wasn’t a guy who served as an alternate captain in previous Leafs seasons and is the guy on the Leafs roster who has been there the longest.
As Tomas Kaberle enters the final year of his contract with the Toronto Maple Leafs, the veteran defenceman has been stripped of his alternate captain duties.
Leafs head coach Ron Wilson has announced that defencemen Mike Komisarek and Francois Beauchemin will serve as alternates this season, leaving Kaberle -- the longest-serving Maple Leaf on the current squad -- without a letter.
Kaberle, the second-highest scoring defenceman in Leafs franchise history, was one of three alternates last season and has worn the ‘A’ for several years. He has spent all 11 seasons of his NHL career with the Leafs.
Of course, that would be the logical way to look at things. If we’re in the business of stirring up a hornet’s nest and causing trouble for everyone, we could call this Brian Burke and Ron Wilson’s revenge at Kaberle for all the discord over the last couple years and this is their way of getting one more shot in on him while he’s on the final year of his contract in Toronto. I think that paragraph now qualifies us for tabloid work in Toronto.
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