How much faith do you have in the core 4?

[rumman]

I'm not in favor of a Marner trade.

Never mentioned that.

I'm in favor of a management/coaching shuffle after even more failure than we've already witnessed.

Only move that makes sense is replacing management. Then let the new (and hopefully) competent management team decide who stays and who goes.

 

[rumman]

They went after grit and not skill this year and lost.

They signed Simmonds Bogosion and traded for Foligno instead of Hall/other offensively inclined player.

The moves they made were literally anti-analtyic focused, intangibles/grit guys.

So naive, it’s not the grit that was the problem, it’s the “gritty” players they acquired. Dubas hasn’t a clue what he’s doing and I can’t wait for him to run out of rope and hear his neck snap. Did you even watch the playoffs this year after the Leafs were eliminated? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

 

[rumman]

I asked who you would move - not Dubas.

For someone with such a strong view on Dubas' perceived incompetence I would expect some sort of substantive idea of what changes to the roster should be made honestly.

Should be easy if hes as bad as you're making it out to be.

Two of AM/MM/WN/JT need to go. There are +/- to moving each one, JT has a NMC so realistically your down to three options. Who knows what could be had, but standing pat is not a option. First step is new management from President down. You keep asking trade who and for what? Who cares, I don’t even care if the Leafs win said trades, if it improves the team I couldn’t give a rat’s ass who wins the trades. I want to win cups not trades.

 

[rumman]

Well that's why we have wonder boy Dubas to work the phones, hopefully other GM's take it easy on the kid because we know agents have had their way with him.

“Work the phones” that’s funny. How many coaches did he interview to replace Babcock?

 

[rumman]

Finally an opinion on who to move!

Fair enough. I disagree in that I think Nylander has more than earned his deal and I think you would really struggle to replace what he brings for his cap hit.

Wouldn't move Marner but I understand why some would.

Personally think moving AM is insanity because he could easily end up the most talented player to wear the jersey to date.

Letting them go at it till their contracts expire? Sounds like betting on this core over all other options to me.

This team needs more compete and less elite zone entries. WN’s value has never been higher, it’d be a perfect time to trade him if they had a competent GM.

 

[rumman]

Who would you hire? Is there someone who has magic fingers towards building winning organizations there free waiting for call from Larry Tannenbaum and man you could lure out his cabin like Colonel Trautman lured John Rambo?

We have gone that route with recent loser Brian Burke, who arguably made way worse mistakes than Dubas to this date. Oilers gave keys to Peter Chiarelli that gutted all of their depth and traded away value piece of a roster in Taylor Hall for Adam Larsson. We had Lou, who traded 2nd rounders for 4th line centers and couldn't handle the cap at all and still can't in Islanders. Some dearly miss Lou, but I don't know if I'd give keys to guy who is almost 80 years old and should handle short term and long term success of organization.

Either you pick some new comer or recent loser. Which one you pick?

You say that Marner has no value. I say he has. Team that has internal cap his cost of 7mil / year for rest of his contract should be pretty nice. If you can't spend 80 million for salaries that kind of contract is pretty nice. I think front loading that contract without any discount from Mitch was stupid, but at least it adds lots of value to it.

I don't think we can find common ground on this issue, but at least I would like to get answer if you want rookie GM again or recent loser again?

Too funny, your position is there are no better GM candidates than wonder boy? I think the air in that bubble needs more oxygen?

 

[Trapper]

Two of AM/MM/WN/JT need to go. There are +/- to moving each one, JT has a NMC so realistically your down to three options. Who knows what could be had, but standing pat is not a option. First step is new management from President down. You keep asking trade who and for what? Who cares, I don’t even care if the Leafs win said trades, if it improves the team I couldn’t give a rat’s ass who wins the trades. I want to win cups not trades.

A change in philosophy will most definitely require a new GM.

But a core reshape where you turn Marner/Rielly into something that is not only skilled but harder to play against, more intense and adds a missing element of forecheck,wall/board play.

Like back in the day when McGriff and Fernandez went for Alomar/Carter. Changed the dynamic.

 

[Gary Nylund]

Its extremely random. Even if the core was as flawed as you believe it to be it would be incredibly random to lose 5 straight first round series. That's the way math works. A 2% chance of something means it should happen 2/100 times. Which means it happens.

Dubas built the best d core in the past 20 years this franchise has had 1 through 6. They got 1 goal from Matthew's and marner and Tavares was hurt while Price went vintage. A lot of things had to go wrong but they win that series more often than not if they replay it. It's fine. I'd rather take my chances with elite talent this team hasnt had in 20 years than trade it away.

No, that's the way losing works.

I swear nobody has taken a statistics course in their life on this forum sometimes. Even flawed teams win rounds every once and a while, flawed cores! MTL just won 3 rounds. Dallas won 3 rounds last year. That only supports that it's about goaltending and randomness.

Just because something is unlikely to happen - or seems unlikely - doesnt mean it isn't driven primarily by variance.

Maybe it's the poker player in me. I don't know. But playing enough poker over my life pushes me to think of how much variance impact results.

Everyone wins once in a while except for us, maybe you should think about that for a bit.

I've won a lot of money playing poker and even played for a living for a few years so I have pretty good idea of how variance works. I had something like 2 losing months out of 36, that's variance. Now think back on the way we folded our hands in the deciding games for four years. When you don't show up to play, that's not variance. When you don't show up to play, you lose, simple as that.

 

[HamiltonNHL]

Nah not a cap dump at all.

The market decides.

Has anyone been traded with a 11 AAV deal ?

Without knowing the player, i'd say an 11 AAV deal would be 2 AAV retained minimum.

 

[Gary Nylund]

We were only favourites in 2 series, Columbus and Montreal. But come on, is it illegal for a team to beat another that finished ahead of them. Montreal beat Toronto, Vancouver beat St. Louis, Bluejackets beat Tampa and Hurricanes beat Washington. It’s not unreasonable to say that they should’ve won some of those series

Washington is the only pass, bunch of 19-20 year olds with a few older guys in their mid-late 20s who probably weren’t expected to be there

Boston1: Game 7, Kapanen destroys Marchand, confiscates Rasks jock making it 4-3 going into the 3rd period. Team and andersen follow up with a 3 goal collapse to lose it

Boston2: redemption year. take a 3-2 series lead. Come out to game 6 and play 45 shit minutes going down 3-1 precede to make it 3-2 with 15 minutes left. Can’t finish the job. Go to game 7 and get completely manhandled and lose again

Columbus: Go into the series with the swagger of a cup champion when in reality we were a fringe playoff team, get shutout 2 of the 5 games, choke and comeback from a 3 goal lead/deficit. Game 5, come out and play and don’t even score a damn goal. Lose again again

Montreal: This time we all thought it was different. Rocket winner Matthews, top 5 scorer Marner, nylander and Tavares being themselves, best d core in 20 years, Campbell gives solid goaltending, depth is ok during season. Playoffs come, oof Tavares goes down with a brutal injury. Drop game 1. Take 3-1 lead right after. Don’t get a DAMN LEAD AFTER THAT. Game 4 was the least time we had a lead. Choke a 3-0 and 2-0 with a dominant ot due to a 2-0 and a weird deflection. Game 7 play shit score a pity goal. Nuff said. Lose again again again

this team can’t win. We have been given a golden opportunity to win every series and we choke. The saying pressure builds diamonds isn’t found on this team. Game 7, The goalie always chokes and shits the bed with a softy guaranteed, the Pk becomes as good as a handicapped tree branch, the pp somehow becomes more inept than usual, the big 4 don’t show up and are thinking about golfing weather and who’s hitting the ball the furthest and depth disappears instantly.

I’m fully expecting next year it’s us vs Florida and one team takes a 3-0 lead. If it’s us we lose the next 4 straight, if it’s them we win 3 and lose yet another game 7. When these happen, the leafs will reach peak chokeness as Florida hasn’t won a round since 1996

Great post. Should be required reading for anyone going on about how happy we should be because we're so "young and talented".

 

[GoLeafsGo96]

No, that's the way losing works.



Everyone wins once in a while except for us, maybe you should think about that for a bit.

I've won a lot of money playing poker and even played for a living for a few years so I have pretty good idea of how variance works. I had something like 2 losing months out of 36, that's variance. Now think back on the way we folded our hands in the deciding games for four years. When you don't show up to play, that's not variance. When you don't show up to play, you lose, simple as that.

2 losing months playing every day and how many buy ins/tournaments? Significantly higher sample size there than 5 playoff series. So talent/skill is likely to win out over that to even out the variance.

It's both - that's the point. You need to play well, AND run well in the luck department to have success. They've had series where they were outplayed, and series where they outplayed the opposition by scoring chances (MTL and CBJ). Those are the two series I'm looking at here and saying they haven't run well on top of playing pretty well in all honesty - they have issues - mostly the PP (lord help me with that damn PP) but I think they can fix around the margins and adjust the strategy to be better there without trading a core guy.

The Boston and WSH series they weren't good enough and a lot of that had to do with having a piss poor defense. They still should win one of those series but the fact that they didn't doesn't have me thinking they need to blow up the core just yet.

They've had Tavares in 2/5 of the playoff losses so far. I think it's unfair to say the core 4 need to be blown up after proving they cant win a round together when the two years they lost with Tavares they lost to a better Boston team and they lost in 5 to Columbus after a 2 month break from hockey due to a worldwide pandemic, where they generally controlled the play IMO.

 

[Ignatius Reilly]

Playoff upsets are pretty common in the NHL. Which works both ways against the Leafs. Losing to Montreal, in isolation, is not a massive deal. It sucks, but upsets happen fairly regularly.

The problem is that over 5 years, they haven't won any upsets despite three chances to do so, and then they've lost two in which they were the favourites. So for simplicities sake, if you say they had a 40% chance of winning any of the Washington or Boston series, and a 60% chance of winning either of the Columbus or Montreal series, then just going by those odds, the Leafs should have won 2 or maybe 3 of those series (and even if you treat Columbus like a coin flip, you still end up in that range, though slightly more likely to only have 2 series wins).

But they lost all 5, with the last 4 going to a final deciding game. Leafs have had 7 games in which they could have clinched a series win in that time span. Here are the stats for Matthews/Marner in those games:

• Game 7 Boston 2018 - Matthews + Marner combine for 1 assist.
• Game 6 Boston 2019 - Matthews + Marner combine for 1 goal.
• Game 7 Boston 2019 - Matthews + Marner combine for 0 points.
• Game 5 Columbus 2020 - Matthews + Marner combine for 0 points.
• Game 5 Montreal 2021 - Matthews + Marner combine for 2 assists.
• Game 6 Montreal 2021 - Matthews + Marner combine for 0 points.
• Game 7 Montreal 2021 - Matthews + Marner combine for 1 assist.

So between the two of them, that's 1 goal, 4 assists (5 points) in 14 games between them, which the Leafs have gone 0-7 in. Our stars folding when it matters most is problematic, especially given that Matthews contract arguably values him as the best player in the league (given that his caphit is pretty close to McDavid's, but only on a 5 year deal) and Marner's values him as probably the 3rd best player in the league (based on caphit, term, and the fact that it was an RFA contract).

Yikes. Those are not good numbers.

They'd be "okay" or statistical outliers or not-bad-for-their-age or any number of excuses IF they hadn't gone for the biggest paydays in the team's history. Just a little give here and there and we'd have a stronger team supporting them which may have been enough to make a difference.

The Columbus play-in fiasco should never have happened. We shouldn't have had to go through the play-in, we should have finished higher.

The missed open-netter by Mikheyev, the awful game-ending turnovers? Would not have mattered if our high end core had scored first.

Something's gotta give. I'd go with Keefe first as he didn't seem to know how to adapt at all.
Dubas needs to go too.
We need to rebalance our cap, meaning one of the core 4 has to go.
Not Tavares, NMC.
Not Willy - he seems to have figured things out.
Not AM34 - he played much better, despite poor results.
So.... seeya Mitch.

Use Marner's cap space to build some depth.
And it's nothing personal, it's just business.

 

[zeke]

So I guess we're looking at what then...

....replacing Marner with something like Gallagher+Danault - playoffs winning type grit?

That's the kind of move we want?

 

[hotpaws]

So I guess we're looking at what then...

....replacing Marner with something like Gallagher+Danault - playoffs winning type grit?

That's the kind of move we want?

i don't know what your looking at but i'm looking at

,,,replacing Tavares with Hamilton and using the extra cap savings and any assets we get from trading JT on a 2nd line C

 

[zeke]

i don't know what your looking at but i'm looking at

,,,replacing Tavares with Hamilton and using the extra cap savings and any assets we get from trading JT on a 2nd line C

Dougie is a gritty playoffs performer?

 

[hotpaws]

Dougie is a gritty playoffs performer?

when has JT been a gritty playoff performer ?

just because a players every stride is a struggle doesn't mean their working harder than other players

 

[Beaumaris]

Only move that makes sense is replacing management. Then let the new (and hopefully) competent management team decide who stays and who goes.

Correct.Too many guys missing the obvious,year after year.
Decade after decade.Scary

 

[egd27]

Not always easily. They needed to win game 81 to clinch the second wild card in 2017.

And all they needed to do was steal a point against the nothing to play for CBJ the next night to get 98 pt Ottawa instead of 118 pt Washington. But surprise surprise, they choked that opportunity as well.

 

[Gary Nylund]

2 losing months playing every day and how many buy ins/tournaments? Significantly higher sample size there than 5 playoff series. So talent/skill is likely to win out over that to even out the variance.

It's both - that's the point. You need to play well, AND run well in the luck department to have success. They've had series where they were outplayed, and series where they outplayed the opposition by scoring chances (MTL and CBJ). Those are the two series I'm looking at here and saying they haven't run well on top of playing pretty well in all honesty - they have issues - mostly the PP (lord help me with that damn PP) but I think they can fix around the margins and adjust the strategy to be better there without trading a core guy.

The Boston and WSH series they weren't good enough and a lot of that had to do with having a piss poor defense. They still should win one of those series but the fact that they didn't doesn't have me thinking they need to blow up the core just yet.

They've had Tavares in 2/5 of the playoff losses so far. I think it's unfair to say the core 4 need to be blown up after proving they cant win a round together when the two years they lost with Tavares they lost to a better Boston team and they lost in 5 to Columbus after a 2 month break from hockey due to a worldwide pandemic, where they generally controlled the play IMO.

Play well enough and you don't need luck. Luck had nothing to do with TB winning the cup this year or last year. Which of the Stanley Cup winners over the last decade would you say were lucky to win? With all the talent we have, we should be contending, not making excuses for not being lucky enough to win even one playoff series.

You're not commenting on what I said about them not even showing up to compete in deciding games, why is that? Could be that you know perfectly well that when you aren't even competing when it all comes down to one game (or one period), then something is very wrong and luck has nothing to do with it?

 

[fahad203]

I'm done with this core. Zero faith

This maple leafs reminds me of Ottawa Senators of early 2000s

Stack young players, does well in regular season only to choke against the Leafs. Where we choke against every body


Matthews is essentially an one trick pony. A lot like Stamkos. Can only shoot and score. Can't carry the line on his own.

 

[Ignatius Reilly]

Play well enough and you don't need luck. Luck had nothing to do with TB winning the cup this year or last year. Which of the Stanley Cup winners over the last decade would you say were lucky to win? With all the talent we have, we should be contending, not making excuses for not being lucky enough to win even one playoff series.

You're not commenting on what I said about them not even showing up to compete in deciding games, why is that? Could be that you know perfectly well that when you aren't even competing when it all comes down to one game (or one period), then something is very wrong and luck has nothing to do with it?

That's the thing right there when it comes to luck.

We have enough skill that we should have won at least two rounds this year. After that, luck can play a role in how far you go and whether you win or come 2nd in the final.

I was fine with the first round exits to Washington and Boston. We were young and learning and on the way up. Except we never moved up in the next 3 years.

What's so infuriating is how we threw away a once-in-a-lifetime situation where we were playing in a very weak division. ECF and SCF were very realistic ambitions.

Zone entries and first round exits seem to be our speciality, maybe someone will make a trophy for them.

 

[Stand Witness]

Keep the core 4, don’t actively shop any of them. If a deal comes across that brings at least fair value then make the move.

I expect only Marner would make sense to move if it came to moving one.

 

[Mugzy97]

After three years, the sample size isn't that small any more. Hockey career's ain't that long, three consecutive years of playoff suckage represents a good chunk of any players career.

I agree and disagree. 3 years for a 23 year old and 3 years for a 30 year old is different. Ones a rookie and the other is in his prime.

Would I like to see him perform better in the playoffs? Undoubtedly. But I don’t think writing him off is a good option at all.

 

[Mugzy97]

They lost to the worst team in the playoffs that wouldn't even have made it in a normal year.

Someone missed the rest of the playoffs

 

[geebster]

That's the thing right there when it comes to luck.

We have enough skill that we should have won at least two rounds this year. After that, luck can play a role in how far you go and whether you win or come 2nd in the final.

I was fine with the first round exits to Washington and Boston. We were young and learning and on the way up. Except we never moved up in the next 3 years.

What's so infuriating is how we threw away a once-in-a-lifetime situation where we were playing in a very weak division. ECF and SCF were very realistic ambitions.

Zone entries and first round exits seem to be our speciality, maybe someone will make a trophy for them.

While that was true on paper and based on reg season play, Matthews and Marner looked horrible, especially when it mattered most. Matthews was the 64th ranked center at the end of the first round in ppg. If you had just average 2nd line center production from him I bet they get through to the conference finals. You cant possibly win a trade so it's probably smartest to run it back. Players DO evolve in playoff production over time. Yzerman being the most brought up example. These guys are talented enough, it just comes down to effort. If either of them cared as much as Spezza does they could produce like Point or Kucherov does.

Sucks but you have to run it back. It's still a great unit both on paper and during the reg season.