Jason Blake
From Frikipedia
If you can't beat 'em, get 'em to join you.
This philosophy has been the Toronto Maple Leafs mantra in terms of signing free agents in the last decade. Whenever a particular player has a reputation of being a "Leaf killer" in the past, they go out and get him the next summer. Invariably, it works out absolutely horribly in the end, as that player is never able to work that magic in a leaf uniform that he tended to display against it. In addition, this strategy ends up in the Leafs paying a hugely inflated salary against the cap for an over-the-hill player who spends half his time on the injured list and the other half screwing the pooch. For examples of this, look no further than Dmitri Khristich, Alexander Mogilny, Brian Leetch, Eric Lindros or Ron Francis, all of whom, in their prime would have been considered some of the best players in hockey. In the end, all of those players retired within one year after having one or more horrible seasons in Toronto.
So, who is this new, 2007-08 version of the late-career Leaf-killer signing? Well, its no other than Jason Blake, the former New York Islanders forward who scored a career-high 40 goals to help the Islanders make the playoffs on the final day of the season, eliminating the Leafs by just one, single, solitary teeny-tiny point...
A four-year, $4-Million per contract should be adequate overpayment for a player who will be decidedly over-the-hill at 38 by the time this deal has concluded. Luckily (or unluckily) for him, this gross overpayment was so egregious as to make him completely undesirable to other teams, even in the team's rebuilding phase. So, fancy four years of playing for a piss-poor hockey team, JB? Too bad.
Do the Leafs make you sick?
Well, do they? For most Ottawa Senators or Montreal Canadiens fans, this would be taken as a given. But Jason Blake took it to all-new heights in 2007. Before even finishing training camp in the blue and white, he was diagnosed with a treatable but incurable form of Leukemia, thus proving once and for all that playing in Toronto does indeed cause cancer.
As a positive, he will not have to put up with the constant badgering from the media and fans about living up to his contract, as he has already (justifiably, one would have to admit) been made into a media darling and hero, no matter how well, or how poorly he plays through it. As a negative, he has cancer, which really sucks.
