Wow I really hope we never adopt this kind of mentality.
Guess all those goals we scored in the Jackets come back are all garbage goals then, because of probability and all that.
The team made an effort to come back when Nylander scored those 2 goals. I don't think you know what garbage time means in sports.
If you think I'm advocating a mentality where the players "stop trying" when probabilities indicate the game is out of reach, nothing could be further from the truth.
I am, however, saying that we as fans should be able to draw a clear distinction between the importance of the goals scored during game 5 and 6, and the ones scored late in games 2 and 4.
If the Columbus comeback never played out, yeah, you could call one late goal a garbage time goal. A comeback like that was literally unprecedented, so if you have to point to an exceptional event that never happened before in an important game, and probably never will again, then you don't really have an argument here. And reality check, the team was down by 3 goals, not 5.
Kind of shoots to shit the claim that the core didn't show up this playoffs, doesn't it? The issue is they got nothing out of anyone else...
To be clear, I am not posting these numbers to prove that the core "showed up". I am posting them to show the exact opposite.
Were they our most dangerous players overall? Yes. Did they do enough? No.
In 7 average regular season games, Matthews would score 10 points. Marner too. Excluding garbage time situations, they had just 11
combined. That's not good enough. This isn't Montreal all over again, but that's a really, really high bar to clear. But make no mistake, their production this series has to be seen as a disappointment.
Taylor Hall, destroyer of every team he has played for? No thanks.
Hall has 84 points in 115 games since that trade, Foligno has 19 in 82. He was cooked when we got him and he's well-done now. He pretty much stole $3.8M from Boston (I love it).
You don't have to like Hall, but he's a highly competent offensive LW and this team has needed some punch from the left side since.... (checks notes)..... back when Lupul was playing with Kessel.
The idea that he "destroys" teams is a joke. He carried New Jersey to the playoffs. He didn't make Buffalo any worse. He hasn't destroyed Boston.
I'm not here to defend Hall though. It's just obvious that he would have been a better move than the one Dubas made. A better player and better fit, at a lower cost. There was no downside to this.
