Are you feeling more or less optimistic about the leafs future since Dubas took over?

[Wafflewhipper]

Only self-destructive fools would publicly badmouth anyone in their own industry. Positive words about your former colleagues are the expected default. Bitter words are little more than a red flag about the person uttering them.

Stir the witches brew woooohoooo. I think you live by that as a rule a bit much

 

[deletethis]

Stir the witches brew woooohoooo. I think you live by that as a rule a bit much

Please explain.

 

[Wafflewhipper]

Please explain.

You always say it. I don’t know why. You think everything is all cloak and dagger or something lol, I don’t know. When there is confrontational events publicly all the time it seems to not be so

 

[deletethis]

You always say it. I don’t know why. You think everything is all cloak and dagger or something lol, I don’t know. When there is confrontational events publicly all the time it seems to not be so

That's not an unfair impression of my perspective of the world. The ocean is more than the waves on the surface. Intelligent successful people speak in measured words. Most confrontations are usually the heat of the moment and usually regretted in retrospect. Cheers.

 

[Wafflewhipper]

That's not an unfair impression of my perspective of the world. The ocean is more than the waves on the surface. Intelligent successful people speak in measured words. Most confrontations are usually the heat of the moment and usually regretted in retrospect. Cheers.

I just posted a interview of Marner by his bud and ex leaf Connor Carrick. It’s in the Marner threadA pretty wide open no holds barred conversation you might like. They say stuff publicly depending on who they are talking too.

 

[deletethis]

I just posted a interview of Marner by his bud and ex leaf Connor Carrick. It’s in the Marner threadA pretty wide open no holds barred conversation you might like. They say stuff publicly depending on who they are talking too.

I guess that would be a red flag for Mitch and Connor. Of course Marner's got himself some stuff-it money already. And he's definitely not some minor league assistant coach looking for work.

 

[Wafflewhipper]

I guess that would be a red flag for Mitch and Connor. Of course Marner's got himself some stuff-it money already. And he's definitely not some minor league assistant coach looking for work.

Its a long interview but really solid right through it

 

[Pilky01]

Way, way less.

Not only has Dubas proven to be a poor judge of talent and a horrible judge of character, but now we’re burnded by several massive long term contracts right as the salary cap is set to crater.

If he had the fortitude to stand up to Marner or Nylander then they would be on short term deals right now and forced to reckon with the new reality that sports revenues are coming down.

Instead they’re all getting paid the full value of thier inflated, bonus laden contracts thanks to Dubas’ unwillingness to negotiate.

Dubas will go down as the worst GM this organization has ever had because not only has he iced a consistently underperforming team, but he did it after starting his tenure with a cupboard that was bursting at the seams with talent.

 

[Menzinger]

Way, way less.

Not only has Dubas proven to be a poor judge of talent and a horrible judge of character, but now we’re burnded by several massive long term contracts right as the salary cap is set to crater.

If he had the fortitude to stand up to Marner or Nylander then they would be on short term deals right now and forced to reckon with the new reality that sports revenues are coming down.

Instead they’re all getting paid the full value of thier inflated, bonus laden contracts thanks to Dubas’ unwillingness to negotiate.

Dubas will go down as the worst GM this organization has ever had because not only has he iced a consistently underperforming team, but he did it after starting his tenure with a cupboard that was bursting at the seams with talent.

So Dubas should have predicted covid?

Come one...

 

[Pilky01]

This is one of the reasons why Dubas beats other teams in convincing players to come here

Convincing players to come?

He had to back up the money trucks just to get Marner, Matthews and Nylander to not leave.



I sometimes can’t help but wonder if MLSE has AstroTurf accounts all over here and Reddit just here to defend the brand.

 

[Pilky01]

So Dubas should have predicted covid?

Come one...

Dubas should have managed the salary cap better. This isn’t a new take post Covid. Dubas irreparably f***ed up the cap when he signed Marner.

“We can and we will” drive this organization off a ****ing cliff with incompetence.

 

[Dekes For Days]

Dubas irreparably f***ed up the cap when he signed Marner.

He did no such thing. He signed two of the best young players in the cap era to the contracts they had earned, in line with their comparables, and is moving forward with a great team and no bad contracts on the roster.

 

[deletethis]

Find criticism for Dubas or not, at least he isn't that Arizona Coyotes' GM. There's incompetence. That guy is ruining that team in real time with horrible trades.

 

[AreBe]

I will answer your question with bigger questions:
1, Are we prepared to acknowledge that the Nation in the NHL is the Unites States?
2, Are we prepared to acknowledge that the NHL is in many - at best- marginal US markets ranking well under the other 3 major sports and then NASCAR and then college and then perhaps even high school?
3, Are we prepared to acknowledge that The NHL must get a fat US TV deal to survive in disinterested markets?
4 Are we prepared to acknowledge that the NHL that the US TV deal not coming if there is a risk of Canadian teams winning the cup
5, Are we prepared to acknowledge that The rules change in the playoffs for the team playing the Canadian team or the team form the big US market in that they can get away with rule breaking and Canadian teams cannot
6 Are we prepared to acknowledge that only way around it - the only chance- is to outskill other teams because if the puck is in the net it is in the net and you cannot fix it.

If you can stop blue pilling and start red pilling, you will see Dubas is doing the best job possible.

Question: is it true that some in Leafs Nation are upset that the Leafs have a leading analytics department?

 

[ACC1224]

I was never overly optimistic. My expectations haven’t changed.

 

[Mess]

I was never overly optimistic. My expectations haven’t changed.

My expectations haven't changed either, as my predictions then and now were never overly optimistic either.

When Dubas signed JT to his $11 mil contract, I said my Leafs are screwed now because I claimed JT contract would act like a magnet and draw AM and MM contracts up to his, and what I feared most was that veteran seasoned player agents were going to take advantage of our new greenhorn GM when it came the signing of the 3 Amigo's.

My contract prediction (for the 3 Amigos right after JT signing).
Matthews ..... @ $12 mil
Tavares .......... @ $11 mil
Marner ...........@ $10 mil
Nylander ..... @ $7.5 mil
---------------------------------
Total ........ $ 40.5 mil (which would consume = 1/2 Leafs salary Cap)

Actual contracts
Matthews ..... @ $11.634 mil
Tavares .......... @ $11.0 mil
Marner ...........@ $10.893 mil
Nylander ..... @ $6,962 mil
---------------------------------
Total ........ $ 40.489 mil (which does consume = 1/2 Leafs salary Cap)

Difference = -$11,000

So I missed by $11k and now we have confirmation in our player agents poll those very agents voting Dubas as the best GM to get the best deals for their clients = exactly my worst fear realized and now confirmed.

Even if I had clairvoyant skills my worst fears couldn't have come any more true as my optimism level of Leafs spending themselves out of contention was already my expectations 2 years ago. Nothing has changed. Spending 1/2 your salary cap on just 4 forwards only leaves 1/2 your cap to surround them with, and that would make being Cup competitive very difficult.

 

[acrobaticgoalie]

I don't

My expectations haven't changed either, as my predictions then and now were never overly optimistic either.

When Dubas signed JT to his $11 mil contract, I said my Leafs are screwed now because I claimed JT contract would act like a magnet and draw AM and MM contracts up to his, and what I feared most was that veteran seasoned player agents were going to take advantage of our new greenhorn GM when it came the signing of the 3 Amigo's.

My contract prediction (for the 3 Amigos right after JT signing).
Matthews ..... @ $12 mil
Tavares .......... @ $11 mil
Marner ...........@ $10 mil
Nylander ..... @ $7.5 mil
---------------------------------
Total ........ $ 40.5 mil (which would consume = 1/2 Leafs salary Cap)

Actual contracts
Matthews ..... @ $11.634 mil
Tavares .......... @ $11.0 mil
Marner ...........@ $10.893 mil
Nylander ..... @ $6,962 mil
---------------------------------
Total ........ $ 40.489 mil (which does consume = 1/2 Leafs salary Cap)

Difference = -$11,000

So I missed by $11k and now we have confirmation in our player agents poll those very agents voting Dubas as the best GM to get the best deals for their clients = exactly my worst fear realized and now confirmed.

Even if I had clairvoyant skills my worst fears couldn't have come any more true as my optimism level of Leafs spending themselves out of contention was already my expectations 2 years ago. Nothing has changed. Spending 1/2 your salary cap on just 4 forwards only leaves 1/2 your cap to surround them with, and that would make being Cup competitive very difficult.

I don't Necessarily think the kids were looking to base their salary on what JT got. Matthews was more likely getting his comparables from McDavid and Eichel's contracts based on age, ability and potential. Which his contract almost falls in the middle of those 2. He wasn't scoring as many points as McDavid but was outscoring Eichel so it seemed about right. Marner from what we had heard was that he didn't care about his comparables and was waiting to see what Matthews had got.

 

[AreBe]

...
Even if I had clairvoyant skills my worst fears couldn't have come any more true as my optimism level of Leafs spending themselves out of contention was already my expectations 2 years ago. Nothing has changed. Spending 1/2 your salary cap on just 4 forwards only leaves 1/2 your cap to surround them with, and that would make being Cup competitive very difficult.

Remember these other variables:
1 we now pay players for what they will be in the future and not what they were in the past- this is a massive, massive sea change in the way of thinking about how to pay players
2 For greater clarity- paying players for who they were and not who they will be is the old way and does not work in a salary cap era
3, much of the math is based on an assumption of explosive growth in the salary cap- more US expansion, teams in Houston, Atlanta again, conceivably Portland and maybe a 4th NYC team, and some hope of getting that all-problem - solving US TV network deal
4, We are in the golden age of Leafs management #1 The lLEafs have an analytics department- wow- an analytics department. As far from Harold Ballard as one could get. Real deal statistical analysis, real deal spreadsheets, real deal plotting of future outcomes, standard deviation, Bell curves, rates of change, weighted averaging. Real math. Wow. And the Leafs Nation has a problem with it.
5 What you want to do is project through analytics where a player will be 3 or 4 years from now and pay them today for that improvement, not digression. For this, to work, you need to pay them when they are young. Paying them when they are old means rewarding for yesterday and a mandatory precipitous decline n the return on investment. What Dubas is doing is paying them today with the return on investment increasing year after year- and that also makes the contracts a bargain and very tradeable.
6, Scouting, the KHL, NCAA, is how you plug your holes.
7, The Leafs have tons of money and so can buy players under contract to the KHL, More Ivan Svenskys drives Leafs Nation crazy but that is the best bang for your buck unless seeking penalty minutes.

8 #We are in the golden age of Leafs management- by golly- an analytics department! Wow. And this is met with concern because people are attached to the old way and people are jealous of some young kid who has done nothing cashing out when some old Geezer McSomething who scored a cup winning goal 15 years ago is not getting his share.

 

[ACC1224]

I don't

I don't Necessarily think the kids were looking to base their salary on what JT got. Matthews was more likely getting his comparables from McDavid and Eichel's contracts based on age, ability and potential. Which his contract almost falls in the middle of those 2. He wasn't scoring as many points as McDavid but was outscoring Eichel so it seemed about right. Marner from what we had heard was that he didn't care about his comparables and was waiting to see what Matthews had got.

Yep big mistake not to sign Marner first.

 

[zeke]

Pretty amazing to have a GM that against all the experts' opinions managed to re-sign all of this elite core of talent and get rid of every single bad contract on the team.

Even better knowing that we have a GM who will never again anchor our team with even one ugly dead money contract like we've had every single year under the cap until Dubas took over.

 

[ACC1224]

Pretty amazing to have a GM that against all the experts' opinions managed to re-sign all of this elite core of talent and get rid of every single bad contract on the team.

Even better knowing that we have a GM who will never again anchor our team with even one ugly dead money contract like we've had every single year under the cap until Dubas took over.

Sure that would be great but how can you know that?

 

[kb]

Sure that would be great but how can you know that?

He doesn't sign 38 year olds in heavy decline to ridiculous contracts. That's a start.

 

[Martin Skoula]

He doesn't sign 38 year olds in heavy decline to ridiculous contracts. That's a start.

I'm still in a state of disbelief that we had a GM actually say something as insane as: "“I’m not worried about six or seven right now. I’m worried about one. And Year One, I know we’re going to have a very good player." about David Clarkson of all people.

It's nice having a GM that you don't have to worry about with that kind of thing.

 

[AreBe]

Pretty amazing to have a GM that against all the experts' opinions managed to re-sign all of this elite core of talent and get rid of every single bad contract on the team.

Even better knowing that we have a GM who will never again anchor our team with even one ugly dead money contract like we've had every single year under the cap until Dubas took over.

He doesn't sign 38 year olds in heavy decline to ridiculous contracts. That's a start.

Leafs Nation has this President's Choice Memories of Cups Won in the Past fixation. Nothing like a big hot cup of past success from a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Just simply cannot understand that the smart move is to pay a player for what they will be in the future, and not for what they were in the past.

Leafs Nation is still fixated on old man Geezer McSomething who sure was something 20 years ago, but now Leafs Nation looks back, fondly recalling those great cup rounds from 15 years ago, and think how great Gezzer McSomething would look in a Leafs uniform, and surely he could teach the young kids about winning- by golly- Geezer McSomething, and he sure was something- in a Leafs uniform! How can we not sign him!

And that is how being stuck with bad contracts happen, instead of future-looking, pay today for tomorrow analytics method that Dubas uses. Leaf Nation would rather we pay today for a player who had success 1, yesterday (or 10 years ago) and 2, for some other team but somehow it is the Leafs job to bear the burden of the player's decline.

 

[ACC1224]

He doesn't sign 38 year olds in heavy decline to ridiculous contracts. That's a start.

Yep he doesn’t seem the type to lean on the vets and the maxed out cap will always prevent that from happening anyway.