Brian Burke is bothered by it to this day.



That moment, at the 2009 draft in Montreal, when Burke, then the president and general manager of the Maple Leafs, rejected Bryan Murray’s plea for a pick swap that would have allowed the Ottawa Senators to select Nazem Kadri seventh overall.



“I felt like I was rude to Bryan,” Burke said this month. “I was mic’d up and he didn’t know it. And I felt I was rude to him and I wasn’t trying to be, I was just going up to pick.”



That was the very first time Kadri’s career in Toronto could have turned sideways, or rather, never started at all.



Unlikely as it seemed at so many junctures along the way, this month marks the 10-year anniversary for Kadri, 28, as part of the Maple Leafs family.



Here, we look back at what proved to be critical early years of that tenure through the eyes of Burke, overseer of all things Leafs until 2013; Dallas Eakins, who...