Went to the game last night. I tried my best to isolate on as many guys as possible during the game.
* My biggest takeaway is that the young guys(and some vets) really forced plays and fueled the Leaf's transition. Lemieux, Tony, Strome, Fil, Fox, Kaapo and the entire fourth line were constantly turning pucks over with cheeky touch passes to no one and trying to make outlets with no support instead of soft-dumping it up the ice.
* Georgiev had a bad night, but the team obviously did him no favors. The amount of times a Leaf was allowed to just waltz down the slot and freeze his release to try and pick a corner was maddening. He was frustrated with himself between whistles - shaking his head and slapping the post with his blocker.
* Kreider, Mika and Fast were probably our best line 5v5 as they made good decisions with the puck and played straight ahead. They gave Toronto fits in the corners.
* I don't know why the forwards were flying the zone so much when it was clear they had been getting into trouble with it all night.
* Kakko looks tired and is always a step behind the play, but I'm not worried about him. He seems to know where to be in all three zones, but he is either too slow getting there or not strong enough to win battles once he is. He reminds me of Chytil last year. His biggest problem is that he is 18.
* William Nylander will be a Ranger one day. Just one of those unexplainable hunches. He was good last night.
* Auston Matthews is obviously VERY skilled, but his game lacked urgency last night. Him trying to 'hot dog' Staal and getting shut down made me chuckle.
* Tavares looked SLOW, hence he was bad. Guys that aren't naturally good skater to begin with + huge contract on the doorstep of Thirty = Mistake.
* Marner was good and bad. Had a hard time when the Rangers were leaning on him early on, but is obviously deadly with time and space.
* Lemieux was BAD, seems like he is trying to play with more finesse lately and it's hurting him. Like Kreider, he's prone to the occasionally delusion that he is skilled enough to slam on the brakes, mohawk spin and fire an accurate pass across the ice to a streaking linemate. Didn't workout so well last night. Strome had similar issues. They were both benched for a period of time.
* Tony and Fox were forcing plays all night. Shots/passes were careening off of skates and leading to 3 on 2's the other way.
* Final Thought:
The lack of structure was concerning after it seemed like they were finally starting to develop some going into the West Coast trip but I keep having to remind myself that they are young and lack depth.
Yes, their gap control is terrible. Yes, they are horrendous at slowing teams down through the neutral zone - but I'm not sure that with the way this current roster is constructed that they would all the sudden be a true bubble team if these issues were addressed. I suspect we would sacrifices some scoring and the narrative would be that Quinn is suffocating the team offensively. Developing young players' offensive talents while teaching them structure and risk mitigation is a challenge - they can usually focus on one or the other and do it well, but both at the same time can be a tall order.
I have my own concerns about Quinn and whether or not he is a good enough to coach an abled roster to a championship, but I don't think this team doesn't have serious problems if he was swapped for say, a guy like Brind'amour - they would probably just have different ones.
