Duke Silver
Truce?
Don't waste your money. Every article comes out somewhere and often are on the web somewhere before the Athletic gets them.
How exactly does The Athletic get their own articles second?
Don't waste your money. Every article comes out somewhere and often are on the web somewhere before the Athletic gets them.
2015 Phaneuf was better than 2019 Hainsey. rielly is better today. Gardiner is a wash. Hunwick 2015 was no worse than Zaitsev and 2015 polak was better than todays 3rd pair. Not much difference in opening night roster IMO.
The other teams
PIT 33.4 After Letang they get thin esp with injuries to Shultz and maata. Not a fan of Johnson
ANA 33.4 Brutal team this year. some nice pieces on d but lost a lot of depth in Theodore to vegas, Montour to buffalo, vatanen to NJ. Not as deep as they used to be
WPG 33.3 Decimated by injury- only Trouba has played every game- have used 12 D this year. Depth drops off quick with injury to buff and Morrissey,
TOR 33.3 I think I made my thoughts clear on this one Nothing after Reilly/gardiner muzzin
PHI 32.3 Very young D will improve. Ghost is their Gardiner. giving up too many shots today but they are real young. Like hagg and sanheim. Provorov will be good. More potential than anyone on this list
TBL 32.0 They give up too many shots overall but play a lot with the lead- to be expected in part. hedman mcdonough are studs. Cernak going to be real good. sergechev is brutal in his end. Stallman/coburn Girardi are approaching their best before dates. best D of the teams listed here. Only thing keeping them out of the finals this year IMO would be an injury in net or to Hedman or mcdonough
WSH 31.9 meh not the caps strength. average d core. one star Carlson. Niskanen is underrated puck mover. other pieces complement them Whole is probably better than sum of its parts.
Overall of those teams Tampa is best today. Philly has the best young pieces, jets injuries have hurt but not much depth even when healthy. Pens are getting old quickly and probably decline first.
It does create more cap space, unless the % increases you're talking about for individual players account for the entirety of the growth of the team's cap as a whole, which they most likely will not (for example, in your scenario, Rielly earns only an extra $2.325M of the cap's overall growth of $16.5M between now and then).
As long as the contracts we already have remain at their current AAV (rather than adjusting their AAV to account for the increase in salary cap) and additional contracts continue to be shed (Marleau's $6.25M, for example), the rising cap creates legitimate cap space.
so what you're saying is that.....personnel doesn't have much to do with it?
We're currently in an excellent cap position beyond 2019/20, I'll leave it at that.I meant per players signed in the future. I think I said it helps the ones already signed. Even at 90M though, Matthews is still at 12.9% of the cap, which is still higher than the cap hit %'s most winning teams handed their stars.
For instance, Rielly's cap hit % in 3 years will only be about 5% of the cap if it is at $93M by then. The next year it could more than double per cap% if hr gets 10.79%. All of a sudden you got one guy making almost 11% and have to account for that. Anderson, Rielly, Dermott, Kadri, Muzzin, Hyman, Kapanen, Johnsson, Gauthier and whoever you promote (Sandin, Liligren, Bracco, etc) will all need contracts in the next 4 years. Guess what, right after that -Matthews, Nylander, Tavares and possibly Marner all due in a two year period.
Yes, it will be better with Marleau off the books. There is not doubt, but it may be short lived as it doesn't mean we will have tons of extra cap room going forward. It doesn't mean we will be able to keep everyone.
What?? that's what you get out of that. personnel makes a big difference.
If you referring to 2015-16 Leafs vs 2018-19 Opening day then the best 2 d-men are the same guys Reilly and gardiner Then its phaneuf vs hainsey.
If you are talking about the comparative teams in terms of shots against- i gave you my thoughts on them, what are yours?
Just for record's sake (and maybe I'm reading this incorrectly), isn't Marleau 6th?It is 5th. Ice time per game average shows who is being played the most. Still 5th is high for him.
not if the GM continues to break RFA rules and give players verbal no trades, why he'd promise a player something that goes against the collective agreement is beyond me, but I'm not a young genius.
We're currently in an excellent cap position beyond 2019/20, I'll leave it at that.
It doesn't mean we'll keep everybody but that was never the case anyway.
regardless of whether Babcock should stay or go, the statement above says way more about the players on the Leafs than it does the coach. I think Babcock is (dare I say it) a "elite" coach, is he the right coach for this team? Probably not. Big disconnect between the GM and coach imo, so boy wonder should bring in Keefe and see if he can do better. I just hate to see the Leafs let a great coach go because the GM/coach can't help each other achieve a common goal.
Shanny get your head out of your rear end and put an end to this nonsense. Letting go of Lou because he was not in favour of sending Babs to speak to the Mathews this summer was a huge mistake. You effectively created this mess and it needs to be fixed. Babs was neutered in the eyes of the players and we are not getting Buy in. No surprise at all
More than one way to skin a cat I guessseems to me you just talked a whole lot about how all those teams have very different quality of personnel....yet all have similar shots against?
To add. Lou was not a GM of a win now team and that all changed whe we signed JT. I have no doubt that we would have had a rightshot D man in our top 4 right now if he was still the GM along with some more physical players.
This post is absolute nonsense. After his first season, Lou not only refused to trade UFAs for futures, he consistently traded futures for vets at the TDL. At free agency he consistently turned to vets to fill out the roster. That’s the very definition of “win now” behaviour. Like a textbook perfect one.
As for the claim that Lou would have made this right handed D magically appear isbalsi nonsense. He had three years to improve the D and his solutions were Hainsey and Zaitsev....
This post is absolute nonsense. After his first season, Lou not only refused to trade UFAs for futures, he consistently traded futures for vets at the TDL. At free agency he consistently turned to vets to fill out the roster. That’s the very definition of “win now” behaviour. Like a textbook perfect one.
As for the claim that Lou would have made this right handed D magically appear isbalsi nonsense. He had three years to improve the D and his solutions were Hainsey and Zaitsev....
Are you happy with the Athletic? Was thinking of checking it out
How sad is that?Marleau has had the third most icetime amongst Leafs forwards this season.
There is zero chance this happens.
Sure, but I think things get overblown with the "goalie is too good" argument. It's a bit unfair because It seems to downplay how good a team actually is. There are plenty of games where a teams goalie doesn't perform well and the offense has to bail out the goalie, but those games aren't nearly talked about as often. The Leafs have the luxury of having such offensive depth that they can bail out Freddy or Sparks if they don't have the best performance on a given night. Tampa is one of the few teams out there that has good depth offensively and defensively, while the Leafs are thin on defence. Right now they're showing they have no depth outside of their top 3-4 guys , which is clearly why they're struggling right now. I don't think there's a coach out there(regardless of how good he is) that can turn a D-Core consisting of Zaitsev, Marincin, Holl and Ozhiganov into a good enough one. Should Babcock get some blame for maybe not playing up to their strengths? Sure, but at some point you have to recognize that some guys aren't NHL'ers and I'm not sure which one those 4 areThat is the argument I’m making. Look no further than Montreal; where would they be without Price? Similar to the Leafs they have flaws that are masked by brilliant goaltending.
Tampa gets great goaltending too and it has probably contributed to an extra 10 points in the standings. However, they don’t have nearly the flaws the Leafs and Canadiens have.
How sad is that?
Great guy, incredible career and completely washed up.
Finger crossed.I'm just hoping he comes to life in the playoffs like last year
Plus Lou's idea of fixing our right side was giving a guy with less than 100 NHL games a 7-year deal. And now we're going to have to give up a good asset to get rid of that player.
The two paragraphs I bolded sum it up succinctly. Why aren't they finishing their checks? Why the flybys? Is it coaching or lack of will?
If it's coaching Babcock needs to change the system. If it's lack of will Babcock needs to correct that lack of will by whatever means necessary up to and including benching or using the press box to make his point.
It's what you do when you don't want to clutter the whole page with your own posts. But I'll try to avoid doing that with you in the future, no problem.Ok I hate replying to post when people quote more then one person. It is a great tactic to distract from the real issues.
Based on what? The guy spent two full series with two points. He was accused by his own fanbase for exactly your issues with Nylander. He then improved and became a Conn Smythe candidate. How is it baseless?As for your comparison I ignore it as it was baseless.
I didn't talk about them being soft. I said that they don't hit a lot. You then mocked me for claiming that they don't hit a lot, with this exact quote: "Chicago did not win without hitting my god you can not be serious."¨With soft players like Buff, Ladd , Seabrook, Brouwer, Shaw , Bicknell etc right. Those are the facts my friend. Teams who possess the puck a lot are not needing to hit to get it back. We do not have one of these players and you think they were soft when they won the cup.