Post-Game Talk: Leafs Win 4-1 | "Corsi Enthusiasts Hate Them!"

[The Beyonder]

What people fail to realize about those shots is that it's like a pyramid. A lot of outside shots, 21 over the top of the circle...anyone can play like Jason Blake, fire everything on the net and have Bowen say after the loss, "The Leafs outshoot their opponent once again but find themselves on the loosing end..." Remember those days?

The thing shots counts don't account for is quality of goaltending, and quality of players. Once again the leafs were outshot, but the quality of shots were not all that great and the leafs got quality goaltending, and solid offence.

 

[HellasLEAF]

Can we please stop bringing up this corsi guys?

I don't get the obsession I really don't.

We have great goaltending.

We have sound-ish defence, pretty good some nights.

And we have a team full of game breakers up front.

We can win any game on any night and excluding the last quarter of the season the year before we have been one of the top teams in the league.

 

[Clark4Ever]

It definitely feels good to be on the other end of the score despite the disparity in shots.

The Paul Maurice/Ron Wilson era was rife with Leaf teams that routinely outshot the opposition and accomplished absolutely nothing.

 

[Stats01]

First off pure class by Phil!! Pure pure class by Phil big props to him.

Second **** Corsi!!! GLG!! 6-1 baby! What a ****ing pass by Bolland, this guy keeps surprising me every game.

 

[dubey]

Does anyone actually use corsi outside of hockey bloggers that need some reason to justify their existence having never played the game before?

 

[happyaccident]

It definitely feels good to be on the other end of the score despite the disparity in shots.

The Paul Maurice/Ron Wilson era was rife with Leaf teams that routinely outshot the opposition and accomplished absolutely nothing.

The Flyers, Habs, Sens, Preds, Wild are full of those type of players also. Having to face the Hawks, Penguins and Ducks now though, I'm frightened. And when do we ever not play like crap against Carolina.

 

[Tyler Biggs*]

Lupul hasn't even reached his prime, he could be even better at 32-33.

 

[Antropovsky]

reminds me of the wilson teams. tons of shots, from crappy places, few results.

Well to be perfectly honest, Minnesota had alot more (according to the diagram) dangerous shots than we do too. Our players just finished on the few they had.

 

[BertCorbeau]

The Flyers, Habs, Sens, Preds, Wild are full of those type of players also. Having to face the Hawks, Penguins and Ducks now though, I'm frightened. And when do we ever not play like crap against Carolina.

Let's hope they can pull it all together on their own and put some good efforts in against those clubs.. But it might come down to having to take a harsh loss for the team to come down from cloud 9 and start playing a better game that can compete with the best

 

[leafstilldeath*]

Well to be perfectly honest, Minnesota had alot more (according to the diagram) dangerous shots than we do too. Our players just finished on the few they had.

Goal tending and special teams was the difference.

Their goalie let in a bad/soft goal and they couldn't capitalize on the freebies given to them by the zebras.

 

[Cor]

Just got home from the game:

Jay McClement, Dave Bolland, Josh Leivo were all fantastic... wouldn't mind seeing this line more in the future.

Speaking of Josh Leivo... if we trade Kulemin, the kid would fit right in. Not a great skater, but guy goes into the corners and does his job well. Like Carter Ashton, he seems to have adjusted his game to fit what the big club is looking for.

James Reimer was very good, but he NEEDS to control his rebounds... I know it's beaten to death, and the odd rebound will happen, but he needs to work on this. It's really his only downfall (with the exception of the over rated high glove "issue")

Morgan Rielly should NOT be sent down.... the pass he made to Trevor Smith.... the kid looks like one of our better d-man as each game goes by.

Tyler Bozak.... he would be a MUCH MUCH better player if he got it out of the head that he ONLY needs to pass to Kessel. It seems once he gets the puck, it's off to Kessel... the right choice or not. Other then that, not much to complain about, he does his job.

Paul Ranger and Dion were good, not great, but good.

Cody Franson was our best d-man tonight. Was much more calm then the first 6 games.

Overall, despite the shot count, we weren't outplayed. At least in person, didn't seem like that AT ALL. Minny threw a lot of weak shots at the net, while Toronto, doesn't do that.

Face-offs need to improve quickly... what else is new

Me and my buddy laughed at Darren Millard's tweet about us "being badly outplayed." We were getting badly outshot, not outplayed.

 

[lebdafor norris]

3-1 against the "way superior" western teams so far.

 

[purexed]

Well to be perfectly honest, Minnesota had alot more (according to the diagram) dangerous shots than we do too. Our players just finished on the few they had.

^^
We don't have any finishers. It's all the numbers game here in MN. Very frustrating.

 

[BIitz]

Not enough love for Levio! His best game by far, looks like he can play on the 3rd line already and showed flashes of top 6 offensive game.

Impressed by his 200 foot game. Played 14 minutes and looked comfortable.

 

[BertCorbeau]

I found the puck to be bouncing funny tonight too

 

[Community]

I think after every game we should just post this:

followed by the game summary:

[/IMG]

Yes they had a lot of shots. Where we they from? A boatload from near the blueline and the wall.

So if we take out the 4 super far attempts (weren't even in the offensive zone) and the bottom left cluster in our zone (6 of the 8 were against the boards or on the blue-line, not even close to good percentage spots, the other 2 are meh but whatever) and the 4 in the top left cluster the shots would bet 23 to 14, which is much better... all of our shots were pretty close.

I didn't think we had a good game, but we weren't bad either.... the 10 minutes of pk in the first was ridiculous (2 out of the 5 were bad/horrible calls I believe) which really hurt us... Offensive guys sit on the bench itching to go while the defensive guys get tired real quick.

 

[Lebanese Leaf]

Not enough love for Kadri's game tonight...

18:08 ice time, an assist, 2 hits (including one big one at the blueline), 5/9 on faceoffs, significant PK time, and a goal line save.

One of the most solid all around games I've ever seen him play.

 

[Pi]

Not enough love for Kadri's game tonight...

18:08 ice time, an assist, 2 hits (including one big one at the blueline), 5/9 on faceoffs, significant PK time, and a goal line save.

One of the most solid all around games I've ever seen him play.

It's pretty much expected of him to play that well now .

 

[FifthLine]

I think if I could describe this team so far this year in one word, it would be: Opportunists

 

[lLeafer]

You can deconstruct the game all you want, but at the end of the day the only stats that matter are wins and losses. Leafs are clutch right now.

 

[Ari91]

The only thing better than winning the game with only 14 shots on net is winning the game by a 3 goal margin

Despite the shot difference, I didn't think most of their shots were very threatening. It was a nice combination of boxing out the opposition along with solid goaltending that came up huge when it needed to, especially on those two breakaway opportunities for the Wild. I say it all the time, Reimer doesn't look great doing it but he gets the job done. He's shown time and time again that he can bounce back from a bad performance and tonight was no different. Getting solid goaltending by your two young goalies isn't a problem in my books.

What a great play by Kessel on the empty netter.

First we win a game in the shootout. Then we tie a game with our goalie pulled and 30 seconds left in regulation. Now we've scored an empty netter. These are all things that don't seem to happen all that often for the Leafs and we've already seen all 3 of them happen in the span of 7 games into the season. Hopefully that's a good sign.

 

[Warden of the North]

Not enough love for Kadri's game tonight...

18:08 ice time, an assist, 2 hits (including one big one at the blueline), 5/9 on faceoffs, significant PK time, and a goal line save.

One of the most solid all around games I've ever seen him play.

Its obvious hes in the dog house

 

[Blufreezy]

Liked Reimers play tonight. His puck handling still scares me behind the net but he seemed to be making more passes down the boards and down the ice instead of stopping it behind the net ad lettin the d pick it up. looked like he's taking notes from bernier. I love it. In glad they're both positive about the whole "who starts thing" - we don't have a goaltending battle, we just have goaltending, and they both want the team to win before anything.

 

[zeke]

1. It's just not fair to other teams that gardiner-rielly is our 2nd pp pair....and deservedly so, because dion-cody are one of the best pp pairs in the league. Our pp is going to be absolutely unstoppable this year.

2. Love love love kadri getting pk duty. He is very good at it, with speed, smarts, and poise. I still say we win game 7 if kadri is out defending the lead in those dying minutes. The fact that he's playing well in all game situations now might mean that he finally starts getting the #1c minutes he deserves.

3. Reims was rusty but still made it look easy. He's really good.

4. People always crap on bozie but he was great tonight, winning board battles and defending like a boss.

5. If kessel had touched the puck i would have been pissed. He didn't deserve that goal. Kessel was dogging it all night long. Pretty pathetic effort from him.


In general i just love watching a team with so much elite skill all over the lineup. Even in games when we clearly miss the physical board presence of jvr, clarkson, and kuky, the skill is still enough for us to win and win big.

This is a very easy team to root for.

 

[Sergei Berezin]

Its obvious hes in the dog house

Really?


He played normal ES and PP minutes, and was even given a few shifts on the PK. Not sure he's still in it... unless you're being sarcastic? haha