At first blush, it might appear Curtis Joseph was a superior offseason navigator than Ed Belfour.

	Curtis Joseph won't be asked to levitate in Detroit. But he will be expected to win a Cup.

Joseph, after all, landed in Motor City behind a championship defense, a high-powered offense sprinkled with future Hall of Famers and a franchise backed by the spend-whatever-it-takes ownership of Mike Ilitch.

Belfour, by contrast, landed smack in the middle of Joseph's shadow, leaving the relatively quiet surroundings of Dallas, where the Cowboys are followed in the news by the Cowboys and the Cowboys, to sign in Toronto, home of the unfounded hockey rumor and a team nestled comfortably in a 35-year losing streak.

That Belfour will get a $2 million bonus if the Leafs win the Stanley Cup in the next two years or win five playoff rounds tells you ownership is aware of just how long it's been.

Clearly, as the 2002-2003 regular season dawns, Joseph and Belfour are among those individuals being watched most closely as they attempt to prove to their respective teams that they are not just prime time players, but the best in the business.

But while Joseph looks to be in the better place, first impressions can be misleading. More to the point, it may be as the season grinds on that it is Joseph who will find the Detroit spotlight hotter than that which he bequeathed to Belfour five hours down the highway in Ontario.

How so? Well, for starters, Detroit is about as easy on goaltenders as Randy Moss is on traffic cops.

Just ask Tim Cheveldae, Bob Essensa, Mike Vernon and Chris Osgood, to mention four Red Wing contestants from the past decade. All four did some very good things for the franchise, and Vernon and Osgood both earned Stanley Cup rings.

It may be as the season grinds on that it is Joseph who will find the Detroit spotlight hotter than that which he bequeathed to Belfour five hours down the highway in Ontario. How so? Well, for starters, Detroit is about as easy on goaltenders as Randy Moss is on traffic cops.

But when the team didn't deliver the goods, the focus was on the goalies. Cheveldae and Essensa, in particular, were brutalized by Detroit fans, and Cheveldae went from being one of the game's brighter netminding prospects of the early 1990s to a guy with a nervous tic.

Even Dominik Hasek received a rough ride during the playoffs last year after the Wings fell behind 2-0 to Vancouver in the first round.

In Toronto, by contrast, goaltenders have often been the most loved players on the team, the courageous athletes forced to play behind one bad team or the other during the up-and-down seventies and horrendous eighties.

Maybe it was the grandfatherly countenance of Johnny Bower that set the tone. But while players like future Hall of Famer Larry Murphy were treated miserably by Leafs fans for their perceived shortcomings, moderately talented puckstoppers like Mike Palmateer, Wayne Thomas, Ken Wregget, Allan Bester, Grant Fuhr and Felix Potvin were almost never jeered or booed during their tenures in the city.

Joseph, who could never get the club past the Eastern Conference final and on several occasions seemed to wilt as the playoffs wore on, nonetheless became a virtual saint in the city, beloved by millions who mourned when he grew sick of the silliness of the dysfunctional Leaf organization and walked out the door.

So while Joseph is now walking into a city that last spring watched Hasek rebound from the catcalls to win his first and only Cup, Belfour joins a hockey community in which goalies have rarely been called to account for the multiple failures of the franchise.

Quite clearly, the Wings own superior talent to the Leafs. But they are also a team in some degree of flux, a team that lost Hasek and veteran blueliners Fredrik Olausson, Steve Duchesne and Uwe Krupp from last year's depth chart.

Steve Yzerman will miss a chunk of the early part of the season, while Dave Lewis will have his hands full putting his stamp on a team that has been run by the enigmatic personality of Scott Bowman for the better part of a decade.

Repeating is very, very difficult in the NHL, at least partly because the effort and self-sacrifice required to win a Cup is often contained to a single season before competing interests and agendas take over.

In Toronto, meanwhile, Gary Roberts will be watching for several months as he recovers from double shoulder surgery, but for the most part the club is set and settled. Pat Quinn returns as the only dual GM/head coach in the league, Tom Fitzgerald and Ric Jackman were the only noteable free agent acquisitions other than Belfour and the club has gone for months now without making a ground-breaking trade.

Joseph has to win the Cup or be branded a failure, or at least second best to Hasek. Belfour, on the other hand, just has to make sure the numbers don't get too ugly and that he keeps enough game-worn, signed jerseys on the shelves for happy Leafs fans to snap up.

The big news of training camp was the performance of 19-year-old defense prospect Carlo Colaiacovo, and the most significant competition for a job was on the fourth line where Nik Antropov, Josh Holden, Paul Healey and Aaron Gavey fought it out, with Antropov winning the position.

The Leafs went into camp a set team and left that way. Belfour's preseason penchant for giving up a goal on the first shot he face in intrasquad games or exhibition matches was noted and he did receive the odd Bronx cheer, but for the most part Leafs fans are waiting and hoping he can play at least as well as Joseph.

Notice the comparison, by the way. Belfour doesn't have to outplay his predecessor, just supply a reasonable facsimile. In a larger sense, fans in Toronto will continue to support the team regardless of its actual performance, a reality that has bred an arrogance on the part of ownership which allowed the team to hike ticket prices last June with the promise of hiring high-profile new players and then not bother to go out and get the players.

Joseph has to win the Cup or be branded a failure, or at least second best to Hasek.

Belfour, on the other hand, just has to make sure the numbers don't get too ugly and that he keeps enough game-worn, signed jerseys on the shelves for happy Leafs fans to snap up.

It's not like there's been a lofty standard of excellence set that he must meet.

Both goaltenders have enjoyed stellar NHL careers. Belfour has enjoyed decisively more success, including various individual awards, a Stanley Cup and lucrative enough contracts that he occasionally offers up $1 billion bribes to police officers.

Like Terry Sawchuk and Jacques Plante before him, he arrives in Toronto with a Hall of Fame résumé already in place.

Joseph hasn't put up the same numbers, but in St. Louis, Edmonton and Toronto he has always been an energetic contributer to the community and an enormously popular athlete.

To be held in similar esteem in Detroit, all he has to do is make sure he wins the last game of the season.

Damien Cox is a columnist for the Toronto Star and a frequent contributor to ESPN.com.