Mo "promises to address all issues tomorrow"?

[Kickit09]

Has Mo addressed the issues yet? i lost interest

No, but he thinks he has. To quote him, "the squad is good enough".

[Pookie]

You know, I'm not sure how much of the current board was around then, but certainly many of the biard members would be the same. MLSE taking over from whatever the company was called before that wasn't that big a change.

And yes, it was when Gretzky left LA for St. Louis and before he went to New York. It's hard to say what his effect on Toronto would have been (better than the return of Wendel Clark and Doug Gilmour 2.0, though, I'm pretty sure of that), but the point is the GM wanted him and worked out a contract and then the board said no.

I can't imagine any circumstance other than a huge cancellation of season tickets for this ownership to sign a DP.

The short story on the nixed Gretzky trade is as follows:

"In the summer of 1996, GM Cliff Fletcher put together a deal to bring Wayne Gretzky to Toronto for less than market value. That would have given Toronto Mats Sundin, Doug Gilmour and The Great One as their top three centres. But owner Steve Stavro — weighted down by debt while planning for a new arena, and already playing to capacity crowds — nixed the deal."

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/b...1-reasons.aspx

Stavro was essentially the single owner at the time, well the owner with the most shares. He stepped down in 2003 and sold his shares to the Ontario Teacher's Pension Fund when (or around the time) his grocery stores were in financial trouble. The Teacher's have only had majority controlling interest since 2003.

Ironically, Stavro was a huge soccer fanatic and is a member of the Canadian Soccer Hall of Fame... so we might have got that DP after all.

[trane]

Stavro acctualy ran a club, the Toronto City FC, from what I understand they were acctialy the Hibernian (SPL for those who do not know) Squad playing during the summer.

[ensco]

You know, I'm not sure how much of the current board was around then, but certainly many of the biard members would be the same. MLSE taking over from whatever the company was called before that wasn't that big a change.
....
I can't imagine any circumstance other than a huge cancellation of season tickets for this ownership to sign a DP.

The MLSE board has almost 100% turned over since then. But in reality, the board mattered not at all back then, and matters little now.

In the mid 1990s the Board was totally irrelevant - Stavro had the control block and ran the team 100%.

Once Teachers took over, they began to turn the board over. I think the board matters a bit now, Teachers has to care about governance, but Teachers have 58% of the votes and, in reality, Richard Peddie, plus two Teachers partners, "run" MLSE.

(I won't name the Teachers partners because I don't feel like being the person responsible for these guys needing to hire personal security someday).