When a 22 year old Phil Kessel came to Toronto, he was traded for uncertain picks - we knew the round, not the number. The Leafs, who finished dead last in the league in goals against the year prior, never addressed their goaltending needs. Phil Kessel bore the flak for years, as if he negotiated the trade, as if he posed a season's worth of .896 goaltending. He bought Burke more time than he deserved by masking the accountability of organizational weaknesses, and he did it without saying a word.
People wised up to organizational - rather than individual - failure and Burke was out.