While watching, I couldn’t stop drawing the contrasts: Brendan Shanahan’s approach couldn’t be more starkly different from Brian Burke’s in the early days of his tenure. It was almost like he was employing the early-days Burke era example as a manual for what not to do. Shanahan gave Leafs fans more credit for their patience and desire to follow a draft and development model than Burke. He implicitly acknowledged the need to be bad before you can be good. Shanahan and his assistants have kept the details of their plan largely in house — Shanahan has had all the insiders guessing — and they’re much more calculated about their media spots.
Brendan Shanahan well aware of past managerial downfalls
