Recently, I purchased and received tickets to the Toronto Maple Leafs annual Skills Competition (December 6th).

I’ve never been to a Leafs Skills Competition, but have attended a few of the Ottawa Senators ones in the past. I’ll refrain from the obvious “but the Leafs don’t have skills, how can they have a whole competition” joke, but since I’m unsure what to expect, I have a few suggestions for the Maple Leafs Sports Entertainment and event organizers.

Fastest Skater

Normally skills competitions have players skate one full lap around the rink as quickly as possible. That’s a bit boring, so to make things more dramatic, the Leafs should have their players skate around GM Brian Burke’s ego instead. Players should take note this will be marathon more than a speed skate. Completing this challenge is a victory in itself.

Stay classy, Toronto Maple Leafs skills competition

Hardest shot

This is very straight forward. Whoever shoots the hardest shot wins. But we can spice this up a little. We’ll have Leafs players shoot at coach Ron Wilson and whoever can finally shut him up wins.

Shot Blocking

This is a new event open to anybody on the team, including equipment managers. As silly as this challenge may sound, it is a fairly critical challenge. No Leafs defensemen or goaltender has been able to do this in 7 NHL games so far this season. The winner will be signed to a ridiculous contract, and Brian Burke will inexplicably send the rest of his draft picks to another team.

Penalty Killing

This one is pretty simple. It’s a competition that breaks the Leafs team into groups of 4. Each group is tasked with not allowing a goal to be scored for two full minutes. While the expectation is that Toronto might be able to prevent a few goals, Colton Orr has been warned to not punch the group of 6 year old skaters they will be playing against.

Verbal Submission

Another new event for the Leafs Skills Competition. It’s an open challenge to any Leafs player who can out-duel Ron Wilson in verbally attacking Howard Berger. In order to garner the best response, Berger will make a rather innocuous statement as insults and negative quotes are directed at him.

Long Distance Shooting

All Leafs players, front office employees and fans can line up and shoot on Vesa Toskala. Participants will shoot from a faceoff-dot all the way down to the ice to the other net, where Toksala must save the shot. For every shot Toskala lets in, it means another start for the Monster. Sources are saying that Jonas Gustavsson will now finish the season for the Leafs.

Stay classy, Toronto Maple Leaf skills competitions.

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