Future of the team is incredibly bleak

this is the year Leafs should have LTIR Matthews (until playoffs) and pick up another $13M player (in his spot) for the regular season. TB would have done this easily, I'm not sure why the Leafs are trying to make Matthews play thru injury to hobble into the playoffs? What benefit is that?

Could have easily sent the combined package used for (Laughton and Carlo):
Minten,
4th '25,
1st '26,
Grebenkin,
1st '27

to Carolina for Rantanen (signed $12M x 7) - then go into the playoffs with a healthy Matthews. Marner walks in summer..

I would have rather moved the pieces we did for Laughton / Carlo for Seth Jones @ 7M in this scenario. He actually fills a need for us going forward as well and then this offseason we have lots of cap to work with it.
 
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I would have rather moved the pieces we did for Laughton / Carlo for Seth Jones @ 7M in this scenario. He actually fills a need for us going forward as well and then this offseason we have lots of cap to work with it.

By the reports it sounds like Jones set where he wanted to go.

I don't think the Leafs was ever an option.
 
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Strawman. How are the Leafs getting better regardless if they re-sign them or not? How do the Leafs get better letting two of their top players and two of the top free agents go this year?

I don't see how letting Marner and/or Tavares walk, replacing them with two of Nelson/Bennett/Ehlers/Boeser etc, ends up with the Leafs as a better team. Different sure, but better? I seriously doubt it.
You're arguing with yourself. What are talking about? How can you argue with a future that none of us have any idea about?
 
Let Tavares and Marner walk. I love them both but time for a reset. If the remaining guys can't be competitive, they ain't the guys you want. Let it all bleed out, nothing's working now anyway.
If not for a massive overpay, why would free agents sign with Toronto that doesn't have Marner to help them get goals and has Matthews that plays like a 7M forward?
 
Good thing we have our young 2nd line C ready to step up and play full time next season right…..

Oh… wait :popcorn:
 
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Let's be real here. We have arguably 2 prospects of any note in Cowan and maybe Danford neither move the needle. We have no draft picks because we traded them all at the TDL. 2 of our 4 core pieces are UFAs and likely to walk for nothing. We have no #1 dman, hell no #2 dman.

We have NO future. The only possible move this offseason is to throw money around in free agency. For any long time fans, we've seen this story before. We will end up paying players like Komaserk, Lombardi, Armstrong, Connolly, Clarkson, etc big money in free agency and be trash but with a cap strapped team.

There is a very real chance we have gifted Bruins another top 10 draft pick. I am nearing my breaking point with this team.
This failure will be studied in a documentary one day. What an epic disaster and fumble from everyone involved.
 
I honestly don’t think getting Matthews to waive will be hard.

He's got his money and I don’t think his heart is here in any way, the way it’s kind of barely believable with Marner and completely believable from Tavares:

Matthews is from Arizona, from a Mexican American family. What actual rips does he care about playing in Canada or Toronto?

He’s gotten paid and had as good of a chance to win wherever he picks to waive his NMC to go to, so why wouldn’t he?

I think he’d appreciate being out of the media spotlight here so his lack of give a crap can hide in an American market while he continues to cash his MLSE cheques.

I think he would waive pretty quickly to be honest…
You could be absolutely right and we might find out if they tank out first round yet again
 
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Babcock was a piece of of trash on how he handled the players. The one thing though is he held all of them accountable. He wasn’t afraid of benching anyone or bumping them to the 4th line. Once they let Babcock go all that accountable went out the window. The players controlled everything and continue to do that now.
it's almost like good leaders need to be assholes at times
 
How do the Leafs get better and become a true cup contender when they have almost no high value assets to trade outside of the core, who they themselves have full no move protection?

I want them to win, I just don't see a path there short of a miracle at this point.

Because in 2 years the cap will be 114 million and a bunch of teams won’t be able to afford it
 
It would be harder to script a more embarrassing stretch for the Leafs since 2017. The promise and potential from that time has been so thoroughly squandered it isn't even funny. It's like this era has been designed to be as mentally and spiritually cruel as possible to us as fans. It'd be one thing if Matthews, Marner, and Nylander flamed out and busted, or if this team fell out of playoff contention and had to do a pseudo-rebuild. It's another thing to be a consistent playoff team and lose in round 1 ever single f***ing time regardless of opponent or place in the standings. The Leafs have been just good enough to make the dance (never elite enough to win the Division of course, forget even the Conference or the President's Trophy) but not good enough to make any noise in the playoffs. Our one series win came against an exhausted Tampa team on the back of three OT goals, and we got smacked right back down by Florida in round 2, suffering a Gentleman's Sweep.

There really is no sports franchise like this one in the entire world. We've got three of our top ten all time franchise scorers on the team at the exact same time and in all likelihood when their time here is done we'll want to forget the entirety of their tenure together. What other professional sports team can say that? Forget a Championship, this group couldn't even give us a couple of memorable runs like the Sundin and Gilmour Leafs did. The Marleau-Thornton Sharks who were the poster-boys for being regular season heroes managed to win the President's Trophy once and their Division multiple times to go along with multiple playoff series wins, including a couple Conference Finals appearances.

Unfortunately due to a rapidly closing window and our "esteemed" captain all but demanding trades from the GM, our entire future is gone. Mortgaged on this sad-sack core that has proven nothing and given us nothing but misery and a large sense of contempt for them. Since nothing is impossible there is a miniscule chance that this group figures it out and does something worthwhile this season and gives this franchise a reason to bring them all back for next season and beyond. But we've seen enough from this Leafs core to know that the most likely outcome is another first round exit, if not a complete collapse out of the playoffs with the way they're playing under Berube.
 
There really is no sports franchise like this one in the entire world. We've got three of our top ten all time franchise scorers on the team at the exact same time and in all likelihood when their time here is done we'll want to forget the entirety of their tenure together. What other professional sports team can say that? Forget a Championship, this group couldn't even give us a couple of memorable runs like the Sundin and Gilmour Leafs did.
That flat covid cap really hurt them. They overpaid for Tavares, and overpaid for Marner & Matthews just before Covid. They could not get solid goaltending and solid defense. Prior to this year they were at least high scoring except in playoffs when it mattered most.

It truly will be an era to forget, and just wish what could have been. I'm not sure we'll ever have a group of players with individual talents like this group has been, but achieved absolutely nothing.
 
It would be harder to script a more embarrassing stretch for the Leafs since 2017. The promise and potential from that time has been so thoroughly squandered it isn't even funny. It's like this era has been designed to be as mentally and spiritually cruel as possible to us as fans. It'd be one thing if Matthews, Marner, and Nylander flamed out and busted, or if this team fell out of playoff contention and had to do a pseudo-rebuild. It's another thing to be a consistent playoff team and lose in round 1 ever single f***ing time regardless of opponent or place in the standings. The Leafs have been just good enough to make the dance (never elite enough to win the Division of course, forget even the Conference or the President's Trophy) but not good enough to make any noise in the playoffs. Our one series win came against an exhausted Tampa team on the back of three OT goals, and we got smacked right back down by Florida in round 2, suffering a Gentleman's Sweep.

There really is no sports franchise like this one in the entire world. We've got three of our top ten all time franchise scorers on the team at the exact same time and in all likelihood when their time here is done we'll want to forget the entirety of their tenure together. What other professional sports team can say that? Forget a Championship, this group couldn't even give us a couple of memorable runs like the Sundin and Gilmour Leafs did. The Marleau-Thornton Sharks who were the poster-boys for being regular season heroes managed to win the President's Trophy once and their Division multiple times to go along with multiple playoff series wins, including a couple Conference Finals appearances.

Unfortunately due to a rapidly closing window and our "esteemed" captain all but demanding trades from the GM, our entire future is gone. Mortgaged on this sad-sack core that has proven nothing and given us nothing but misery and a large sense of contempt for them. Since nothing is impossible there is a miniscule chance that this group figures it out and does something worthwhile this season and gives this franchise a reason to bring them all back for next season and beyond. But we've seen enough from this Leafs core to know that the most likely outcome is another first round exit, if not a complete collapse out of the playoffs with the way they're playing under Berube.
It's sad but the core and management deserved this.

Matthews and Marner didn't do shit in the playoffs, not one big run.

Nylander was fine come playoff time, but not even close to top 10 in the league as his salary would suggest.

JT was abysmal in the playoffs. Instead of manning up and showing some class and taking some ridiculously cheap contract here, i.e 2 mill for 3 years, he's still trying to f*** us out of every last dollar. A great example which the others no doubt learned from

Rielly never took the next step and quite honestly looks nearly done at 31, forget taking the next step, his next step is looking like the AHL if he keeps this up.

From awful players (come playoffs aka overtime), to awful coaching to awful trades to awful overall management, the fans deserve so much better but these greedy soft losers deserved exactly this. Even in the end, Mitch and JT didn't learn shit, still trying to greedily take every last dollar. Honestly if I never saw any of them in a Leafs uniform ever again, I would be totally fine with it. The bottom line is they failed and took every last dollar to do it.

Greed I can take
Softness I can take
Losing I can take

But all 3....

https://media.tenor.com/FsS7h3CrdngAAAAM/gtfo-get-the-f***-out.gif
 

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