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Around the League - Pre-Season 2024-2025

TMLBlueandWhite

TMLBlueandWhite

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Feb 2, 2023
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Montreal stinks.

Easily the worst team I've seen so far. It wouldn't surprise me if they come last in the league by a wide margin. Words can't even describe how horrendous their power play is.

If Ottawa makes the playoffs Ullmark should win the Hart.

Because Ottawa stinks too. The only games I anticipate they win are the ones Ullmark steals, they get lucky, or they play an even worse opponent. Otherwise they should he competing with Montreal for a lottery pick.

The only thing either of those two teams do well is stand up for one another.

I guess when you stink in every other aspect of the game that's important. Gotta keep team morale up somehow. It's bad enough facing the prospect of losing half the games you play.

Doing it while getting pushed around every night makes for a long and miserable season.
 
MCR74

MCR74

Registered User
Nov 11, 2022
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TMLBlueandWhite said:
Montreal stinks.

Easily the worst team I've seen so far. It wouldn't surprise me if they come last in the league by a wide margin. Words can't even describe how horrendous their power play is.

If Ottawa makes the playoffs Ullmark should win the Hart.

Because Ottawa stinks too. The only games I anticipate they win are the ones Ullmark steals, they get lucky, or they play an even worse opponent. Otherwise they should he competing with Montreal for a lottery pick.

The only thing either of those two teams do well is stand up for one another.

I guess when you stink in every other aspect of the game that's important. Gotta keep team morale up somehow. It's bad enough facing the prospect of losing half the games you play.

Doing it while
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lf Ullmark gets them to post-season, he'll be looking at a substantial raise himself since he's on a one year deal. l'd love to see him strong arm Ottawa.
 
conFABulator

conFABulator

Registered User
Apr 11, 2021
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I actually feel better about our goaltending situation that what the Bruins have.

Swayman is the best goalie in either organization right now and I am not suggesting otherwise. I do think Woll could get to that level and soon, but he also could not.

However, Woll and Stolarz at $3.5M vs Swayman and Korpisalo at $11.5M is a big factor in this comparison. If everyone plays to their expected levels we might see an team save percentage of .915 (Boston) to .912 (Toronto) and that's a difference of seven to ten goals across an entire season and less than one goal across a seven game series. Is there any way to suggest this gap is worth $8M on the cap?

Also, Boston's number three is young with potential and not waiver exempt. They either have to keep him and burn another _800K on goaltending or risk losing him.

This has not been well played by Boston at all. Arbitration with Swayman last year, trading Ullmark before locking in Swayman, having to take back salary in living Ullmark, Neely's comments and the tension between sides. Not well played and not a hometown discount from Swayman.
 
ULF_55

ULF_55

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Feb 27, 2002
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Evilhomer

Evilhomer

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Oct 10, 2019
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TMLBlueandWhite said:
If Ullmark makes it to UFA next year the Leafs should offer him $11M and let Tavares walk.
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I don't think I could imagine a more horrendous contract than that. Besides, Ottawa will probably sign ullmark to a massive contract within the first month of the season, and then he will promptly shit the bed like every other Ottawa goalie has playing behind that terrible team.
 
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hockeywiz542

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May 26, 2008
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www.thestar.com

Dave Feschuk: Iron Mike Keenan weighs in on the Leafs, regrets, tough love and affairs of the heart

The polarizing hockey coach has a new memoir out, including the time he (briefly) talked to the Leafs about a coaching job.
www.thestar.com www.thestar.com

Updated 2 hrs ago

Oct. 6, 2024

670208bc5f234.image.jpg


It was a medical diagnosis that amounted to breaking sports news. This past spring, Mike Keenan, the legendary hockey coach, underwent cardiac surgery to fix an aneurysm in his ascending aorta. Along with saving Keenan’s life, the procedure confirmed an anatomical fact considered improbable in the dressing rooms he once ruled. The man known as Iron Mike does, indeed, have a heart.

“I know a lot of my players have wondered for a long time if I had one at all,” Keenan said with a laugh during an interview this past week. “Well, I guess (the operation) proved it.”

Jokes aside, there’s no denying cold-blooded ruthlessness was a big part of Keenan’s identity during his rise to NHL heights. Ranked fifth on the all-time playoff win list, he won a landmark Stanley Cup with the New York Rangers in 1994, breaking what was then the league’s longest championship drought. He took three other teams to the Stanley Cup final. He coached Canada to wins in the 1987 and 1991 Canada Cup. And though Keenan last held an NHL job in 2009, ensuing stints in the KHL and Europe have seen him coach in five decades.

Now 74, Keenan was set to coach Italy’s national team at the 2026 Olympics in Milan until his recent dalliance with a cracked chest led to a role as a consultant.

For all that, he’s perhaps best remembered for his reliance on inflammatory mind games in the name of dressing-room motivation. The list of historically offended parties is long. Brendan Shanahan, the Maple Leafs president and Hall of Fame player, once said of Keenan: “There’s not a more unforgiving person when you are in his doghouse.”

Curtis Joseph, the otherwise mild-mannered goaltender, was once so enraged during a meeting in Keenan’s office that he picked up something off the desk and threw it at him.

Brett Hull, the NHL’s fifth all-time leading goal scorer, once said of Keenan: “I’ll go to my grave saying he didn’t have a clue what he was doing.”

But most of a half-century since he caught the coaching bug as a high school teacher who oversaw a champion box lacrosse team at Toronto’s Don Mills Collegiate, he remains largely unapologetic for his reputation for rankling talent. As he writes in “Iron Mike: My Life Behind the Bench,” his new memoir: “Winning requires abnormal behaviour.”

Whether than meant goading Joseph for being out of shape or ticking off the likes of Shanahan and Hull with incessant prodding, Keenan remains of the firm belief that most of what he did was essential to the pursuit of victory.

“I know I was hard on a lot of players, but the goal was always to make them better for themselves, both to realize their potential and for the team to win,” Keenan writes in “Iron Mike,” penned with Scott Morrison.
 
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Arzak

Arzak

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Mar 27, 2019
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conFABulator said:
Swayman, McAvoy and Pastrnak are not overpaid? What have they won as a team or individually? Great regular season success and no cups, an epic playoff collapse in their too.
Click to expand...

Yes

:DD

Vezina caliber goalie, Norris caliber D, Rocket winner, Rocket and MVP runner-up with 60+ goals. All signed UFA contracts.

Meanwhile, we have 11M once upon a time Selke nominee hopeful, looking at the top 10 in scoring from far far away.


$11M RFA looking for a raise. :cool:
 
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Dreakmur

Dreakmur

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Mar 25, 2008
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PromisedLand

PromisedLand

I need more FOOD
Dec 3, 2016
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fahad203 said:
Alot of former leafs got waived today

View attachment 912973
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Jimmy Firecracker said:
https://x.com/i/web/status/1842987440698712300

https://x.com/i/web/status/1842989862812807605

Holl was made a 7th defenseman last season and now both he and Engvall have been waived. Why were these bums held in such high regard and used so prominently here when the rest of the league can see them for what they are?
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because kyle dubas was and will forever be a completely incompetent trash
 
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IPS

Registered User
Sep 28, 2017
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Jimmy Firecracker said:
We exposed McCann to protect Holl…
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Yes, literally one of the only two teams in that expansion draft who opted for the 4/4 protection format.

All so we could protect Justin Holl :laugh:

Could we please rehash all of the advanced stats that told us Justin Holl was an elite shutdown D and those of us who said he sucked had no idea what we were watching?

@Dekes For Days you're pretty well versed in those stats, wanna start?
 
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MCR74

MCR74

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