This shouldn't take long.
Now that the Anaheim Ducks' season is over, the Brian Burke-to-Toronto speculation will intensify and the good folks at Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment, if they have their wits about them, will find out very quickly whether there is a legitimate chance of this actually happening.
No need to drag this out. If MLSE wants to turn this search into a dog and pony show, Burke is not the guy they want. Or the guy they will get.
If Burke is indeed their first choice to take over as president and general manager in Toronto, as has been widely speculated, the Leafs need to act swiftly and decisively and with a sense of real purpose
They don't need to interview Burke so much as they need to negotiate with him, which will be true of all their primary candidates. I mean, if they don't know what Burke or Jim Rutherford or Doug Risebrough or whomever are all about by now, then they have even bigger problems than we thought.
The only discussions that need to take place with any of the top candidates are as follows: Salary, term and autonomy. Bingo, bango, bongo.
This isn't all that complicated unless they choose to make it so and if they do, none of the experienced guys with jobs are going to waste their time.
And the Leafs can only get this done if they get permission from the NHL and Ducks' owner Henry Samueli to speak to Burke.
One would have to think this will happen fairly quickly.
A lot of people seem to have this Burke-to-Toronto scenario as a slam dunk.
While it's conceivable Burke could end up in Toronto, there are no guarantees.
At the end of the day, there are really only three possibilities.
One, Burke signs a long-term contract extension with the Ducks. The fact that this has yet to happen, even though Burke and the Ducks were in the midst of negotiating it when the Toronto job opened up, tells you that the window of opportunity is indeed there for the Leafs. If Burke were 100 per cent committed to Anaheim for the long term, his deal there would have been done by now.
Two, the Leafs request permission from Anaheim to talk to Burke and permission is denied. Although Ducks' owner Henry Samueli publicly stated, when the Leaf speculation first began, he would not stand in Burke's way if a more attractive opportunity was made available, there's no iron-clad guarantee the Ducks just let the Leafs waltz in and take their GM. Remember, Burke has a year left on his contract in Anaheim and the NHL no longer permits one team to compensate another team with draft picks or whatever in exchange for the services of executives. But the reality would seem to be that if Burke is intrigued by the Toronto job, and Anaheim says no to the Leafs, Burke would just fulfill the final year of his contract and move on as a free agent in the summer of 2009.
Three, the Leafs request permission from Anaheim and reach an agreement with Burke to take over in Toronto.
Logic would suggest what's behind Door No. 3 is the most plausible or logical scenario but where pro hockey is considered, logic doesn't always win out. The dynamics between owners and the dynamics of contract negotiations don't always follow the script. But if the Ducks give the green light, there's nothing stopping MLSE from getting Burke if he finds the offer to his liking.
It's certainly going to be interesting.
It's hard to imagine Burke not having interest in the Toronto job. He's not one of those guys who grew up bleeding blue and white and who believes there is some mystical power associated with the Maple Leaf. But it's an Original Six franchise where hockey matters most. It's in the East, much closer to his grown-up family in Boston. And now that he has a new brood of toddlers with his Canadian wife Jennifer, who works in television and might welcome the opportunities Toronto would offer, being in the Eastern Conference would certainly give him more time at home and a lot less time on planes, criss-crossing the nation as he has since first being a GM in Vancouver and then in Anaheim. He has plenty of personal reasons why a move to Toronto, or anywhere in the East, makes a lot of sense.
It will be up to the Leafs' ownership to provide him with the professional reasons to make the move – IF the Ducks are willing to accommodate it.
And one suspects we find that out in very short order.