I don’t care where we are in the standings, having watched almost all of our games this year, we just aren’t good. By far the worst Leafs team in the past 5 seasons. The last 4 seasons we carried the play most games, while this year we look like the weaker team most nights. Hemmed into our own zone more than the other way around, outshot, outskated, outplayed.
I wouldn’t say we’re trash, but we’re thoroughly mediocre, we play like a playoff bubble team that has a better than .500 record mostly due to strong goaltending.
I do think Berube is probably a shit coach for this roster. We’re built to be creative and risk taking in the o-zone, and to defend with a bit more of a high risk pressure style in the d-zone, where we allow some better chances against but tend to win the puck back fast. But under Berube we collapse around the net defensively, so we get hemmed into our own zone constantly, never first to the puck along the boards. And offensively we’re far too cautious/conservative, super predictable out there.
The players are also not playing well, but I think Berube’s style is a poor fit for them.
As for tonight, no Leaf was particularly good (other than maybe Willy), but the standout poor performance was Marner. Overall he’s been our best player this year, this game was an outlier, but man, he was REALLY bad tonight. Bobbling the puck everywhere, terrible turnovers, making nothing happen offensively, the worst regular season game I’ve seen from him in some time.