All the news about the Leafs these days surrounds the imminent announcement of Brian Burke as the new president and GM for the team.

Now we've seen GM's come and go over the years, but this one in particular has my interest, and not because of who it is.

I'm more excited at what appears on the surface to finally be an attempt to make the management of the team credible and install some confidence in fans that they might actually care a little about winning rather than just raking in cash.

Rumour has it that Mr. Burke's contract is pretty explicit about him being able to do pretty much whatever he wants without approval from the Leafs brass. With a 6 year contract, that should give him plenty of time to prove his muster without having to care about immediate results or playoff ticket sales or anything else.

With the league's salary cap, upper management don't have to worry about him breaking the bank and just trying to buy his way into a decent team, so it seems they can leave him free to do anything he wants and just hope for the best.

If he's half as good as the media is portraying him to be, this could give some very good results in 4 or 5 years or so, and if we see him further tearing the team down over the next 2 or 3, at least we don't have to be skeptical that they're just improving their bottom line under the guise of rebuilding.

Yes, this is very good news for those of us trying to keep our false hopes alive. In this case, there may very well be actual real hope to look forward to now!