Player Discussion Mitch Marner, Continued

[francis246]

It takes cap to get the good depth. If not you have to grow it in house.

Marner was clenching his stick to end the game last night. Maybe a sign of what is to come games 5 6 7 in a 2025 playoff.

MM and AM are not playing well 5v5. They need to get him back with JT.

Liked the @Gary Nylund lines..

KAD
_JM
PMN

Tampa was over the cap after the first cup and had to dump a bunch of guys and found replacements internally, through trade and from UFA with very limited cap. Same with Chicago and Pittsburgh. It doesn’t take cap to get good depth, it takes management teams picking the right guys that will put play their contracts. It’s quite simple.

Obviously it would be better if the core wasn’t paid as much as they are but the problem isn’t a lack of cap, it’s that when we have cap space we waste it on pieces that don’t solve problems. Other contenders don’t spend 2.4 on a 4th line C and 1.4 on a 40 year old enforcer that doesn’t even have a permanent spot in a healthy 12 man group, that money goes to their tier 2 Verhaghe/Bennet/Hagel/Cirelli/Nichushkin/Lehkonen group that can regularly impact a series positively. Our best bottom 6ers are regularly our cheapest, it’s the 1.5-4.5mil range guys that continually disappoint. Condensing those down into a single 5-6 mil guy and pushing everyone else down a slot would go a lot further than chasing the premium grinder of the next FA class with a 3 mil deal.

DING DING f***ING DING. Not sure why this is so hard to comprehend. Who we have been identifying as depth players and what we have been paying them has been awful. That started under Lou and has continued under Dubas and Tre to some extent.
Also we need to trust some guys internally and give them the opportunity to play. I feel like Toronto always feels the need to spend cap on 3rd and 4th liners.

 

[francis246]

Just gonna pop in with a question regarding this Kucherov/Marner-thing you’re doing (which is ridiculous):

If Kucherov has been “disappearing” in game 7s, the main thing is that he’s got supporting casts to help him out - BECAUSE he doesn’t demand top dollar so that the TEAM can acquire the right supporting cast! It’s mind blowing how some people here can’t comprehend that it’s NOT SMART to put so much money into just a few players so that the rest of the team consists of players that can’t contribute enough.

Why, after so many failed playoffs, do some want to do the same thing for x amount of years, instead of trying something else? Why are you so content on being ousted in the first round? Why?

I mean, look at this @ACC1224 person - he’s laughing out loud at this, since he doesn’t have a good rebuttal and seems content on trying the same thing over and over again. He can’t be a fan of the Maple Leafs, right?

This post is kinda silly. I’m gonna explain why. Kucherov didn’t command less. You guys are fooling yourself into thinking that. Kucherov took as much as the the lightning were willing to give him because their GM has a backbone. They set their internal cap at 9.5 and that’s the max they were willing to go with him. If Marner’s contract was offered to Kucherov there’s a 0% chance he’s saying no to it.

You guys can keep trying to convince yourselves that other stars took less. They didn’t. They didn’t have a choice but to agree to the cap structure in front of them. That’s why I resent management and not that players here in Toronto. Dubas and Shanny never drew a hard line. The Tavares signing destroyed our internal cap structure and that was that. Additionally Tampa still had cap issues, they had to lose Yanni Gourde, Tyler Johnson, Onjrei Palat and Alex Killorn in one summer no? As well as Carter Verhaghe.

 

[Gary Nylund]

Going north/south, get more guy to the net for screen, deflection and get rebound, better on 1v1 battle so get back the puck a bit more often on his stick, help to simplify his game unstead of trying the perfect play all the time.

Just small detail at the different areawho help him

I don't think north/south plays to Marner's strengths and I'm pretty sure that nobody's been stopping him from simplifying his game before, but whatever. Bottom line is that playoff Marner over the last 8 years has been nowhere near as good as regular season Marner. Maybe things will be different this season, but I wouldn't count on it if I were you.

 

[francis246]

Woll, McCabe and Knies will not be so cheap next year and Marner wants $2-3m more. The overpays have bled this team of any depth it had and draft capital because the core cannot get it done. Keep overpaying the core and get used to a bottom 6 that features players like Holmberg, Lorentz, Robertson and Dewar and vets close to the end of their rope.

Spoiler alert: playing the Leafs in a single game in regular season is not the same as playing a 7 game series where you play the same players every other night. This is why the Leafs under Shanny are regular season warriors and sub 500 in the playoffs.

McCabe signed an extension for well below market value.

 

[ToneDog]

McCabe signed an extension for well below market value.

Looking like a good deal now that he is playing with Tanev. The overpays I was referring to were to the core 5.

 

[thusk]

I'd rather go Bennett and Kadri @ 50%.

1- Calgary will NEVER retain 50% for 5 year

2- By exemple if Florida offer 6,5M to Bennett, just to tie it with taxes, they will need to pay him like 8,5M. How much leafs gonna need to pay him to convince him to move out of florida?

 

[GoonieFace]

Tampa was over the cap after the first cup and had to dump a bunch of guys and found replacements internally, through trade and from UFA with very limited cap. Same with Chicago and Pittsburgh. It doesn’t take cap to get good depth, it takes management teams picking the right guys that will put play their contracts. It’s quite simple.



DING DING f***ING DING. Not sure why this is so hard to comprehend. Who we have been identifying as depth players and what we have been paying them has been awful. That started under Lou and has continued under Dubas and Tre to some extent.
Also we need to trust some guys internally and give them the opportunity to play. I feel like Toronto always feels the need to spend cap on 3rd and 4th liners.

So Reaves makes 1.35, Kampf makes 2.4m. Replace both those guys with 775k players, that gives us $2.2 mil extra. Not sure that’s the make or break here.

Right now we basically have 6 regulars making peanuts. Knies, Holmberg, Patches, Minten, Lorentz and Robertson. How many minimum wage players do you expect to have on the team? They more seem to have trouble finding the right bottom tier guys.

 

[thusk]

I don't think north/south plays to Marner's strengths and I'm pretty sure that nobody's been stopping him from simplifying his game before, but whatever. Bottom line is that playoff Marner over the last 8 years has been nowhere near as good as regular season Marner. Maybe things will be different this season, but I wouldn't count on it if I were you.

1- In 2018 under Babcock, he played the same exact way he's doing right now and was by a miles leafs best player and was not even close. In a system much closer of actual Berube system than keefe system

2- When the system asking for cycling until something opening vs attavking the net and make thing happen, you will not take he same kind of decision on the ice.2 complete different type of game, Its pretty simple to understand.

3- Marner don't have a pretty strong shot so if he want to be useful, he need to attack the net to score and get people in front of net net to create kind of shot/pass for deflect/ rebound from distance.

Keefe is more a system based on skills and speed, Berube system based on 1v1 battle and team commitment.

Both having good and bad thing coming with...

 

[francis246]

So Reaves makes 1.35, Kampf makes 2.4m. Replace both those guys with 775k players, that gives us $2.2 mil extra. Not sure that’s the make or break here.

Right now we basically have 6 regulars making peanuts. Knies, Holmberg, Patches, Minten, Lorentz and Robertson. How many minimum wage players do you expect to have on the team? They more seem to have trouble finding the right bottom tier guys.

Again you’re missing the point. It’s not about cap. And this is the issue that the NHL has created. You’re so fixated on arguing about the stupid cap you’re not reading the contents of my post.

It’s about IDENTIFYING GOOD PLAYERS. Full stop. Having more cap space is not going to solve any problems if as an organization you cannot identify the right players. That is the point myself and a few others are trying to make. Toronto has been awful at grabbing value players. Then on top of that they are overpaying depth guys we shouldn’t be. So it’s a double whammy.

Why does Tampa have no issues promoting guys from the AHL? They do it every year. Their drafting and development system is unbelievable. That is why when they had to dump 6 guys in Verhaghe, Palat, Gourde, Killorn, Johnson, and McDonoigh in one offseason they didn’t miss a beat.

Tampa doesn’t waste money on UFA’s. They accrue cap space and target young RFA’s teams want to move off of and then resign them for cheap. Florida has the same model. How many UFA’s did Florida sign during their two cup runs? I think one or two max. They picked guys up off waivers and used draft capital to build their team.

 

[Martin Skoula]

So Reaves makes 1.35, Kampf makes 2.4m. Replace both those guys with 775k players, that gives us $2.2 mil extra. Not sure that’s the make or break here.

Right now we basically have 6 regulars making peanuts. Knies, Holmberg, Patches, Minten, Lorentz and Robertson. How many minimum wage players do you expect to have on the team? They more seem to have trouble finding the right bottom tier guys.

10 of Florida’s players make Kampf money or less. Ok I lied one of them makes 100k more. One of those is a 13F and one is a 7D to be fair but that’s still 8 regulars making peanuts. We’re probably going to sign a few of them once they go to UFA and stop costing peanuts while Florida picks up more no-name minimum wage grinders and turns them into useful assets someone else overpays for.

 

[GoonieFace]

Again you’re missing the point. It’s not about cap. And this is the issue that the NHL has created. You’re so fixated on arguing about the stupid cap you’re not reading the contents of my post.

It’s about IDENTIFYING GOOD PLAYERS. Full stop. Having more cap space is not going to solve any problems if as an organization you cannot identify the right players. That is the point myself and a few others are trying to make. Toronto has been awful at grabbing value players. Then on top of that they are overpaying depth guys we shouldn’t be. So it’s a double whammy.

Why does Tampa have no issues promoting guys from the AHL? They do it every year. Their drafting and development system is unbelievable. That is why when they had to dump 6 guys in Verhaghe, Palat, Gourde, Killorn, Johnson, and McDonoigh in one offseason they didn’t miss a beat.

Tampa doesn’t waste money on UFA’s. They accrue cap space and target young RFA’s teams want to move off of and then resign them for cheap. Florida has the same model. How many UFA’s did Florida sign during their two cup runs? I think one or two max. They picked guys up off waivers and used draft capital to build their team.

Well yea, that’s why I said it seems they have trouble finding the right bottom tier guys. They also never seem to make trades for those “hidden gems”.

I’ve said it before, this organization is a joke top to bottom.

10 of Florida’s players make Kampf money or less. Ok I lied one of them makes 100k more. One of those is a 13F and one is a 7D to be fair but that’s still 8 regulars making peanuts. We’re probably going to sign a few of them once they go to UFA and stop costing peanuts while Florida picks up more no-name minimum wage grinders and turns them into useful assets someone else overpays for.

I agree, this team loves to overpay everyone and can’t seem to find these players. We keep getting the Dewars of the world

 

[Martin Skoula]

Well yea, that’s why I said it seems they have trouble finding the right bottom tier guys. They also never seem to make trades for those “hidden gems”.

I’ve said it before, this organization is a joke top to bottom.


I agree, this team loves to overpay everyone and can’t seem to find these players. We keep getting the Dewars of the world

I don’t even mind Dewar but I don’t see what justified paying him 400k more than Lorentz and paying picks for the privilege. Same with Patches’ bonuses and giving Hakanpaa more than league min. None of these are “bad” in a vacuum but other than Patches I don’t see what these guys are doing that a generic minimum wager can’t. Give guys the extra 400k or performance bonuses but make sure it’s the right guys.

 

[Hallonbroder]

This post is kinda silly. I’m gonna explain why. Kucherov didn’t command less. You guys are fooling yourself into thinking that. Kucherov took as much as the the lightning were willing to give him because their GM has a backbone. They set their internal cap at 9.5 and that’s the max they were willing to go with him. If Marner’s contract was offered to Kucherov there’s a 0% chance he’s saying no to it.

You guys can keep trying to convince yourselves that other stars took less. They didn’t. They didn’t have a choice but to agree to the cap structure in front of them. That’s why I resent management and not that players here in Toronto. Dubas and Shanny never drew a hard line. The Tavares signing destroyed our internal cap structure and that was that. Additionally Tampa still had cap issues, they had to lose Yanni Gourde, Tyler Johnson, Onjrei Palat and Alex Killorn in one summer no? As well as Carter Verhaghe.

So what’s wrong with my post? It was, essentially, a comment on that you have to manage your roster wisely, and it’s not wise to give both Marner and Nylander those kinds of deals for any team. That hard cap the Lightning used made sure that they could spend wisely on a deep roster, instead of debating if Holmberg or a rookie can play 3C.

I don’t think anyone should resent Marner - he’s a great player, albeit unlikable and bad in the playoffs, but It’d be super duper silly to throw 12-14 mil on a winger when you already have done that, and even worse depending on the same lacklustre core over and over. Yes, other cores failed before winning too, but at least they won some series and showed signs of greatness

 

[Gary Nylund]

1- In 2018 under Babcock, he played the same exact way he's doing right now and was by a miles leafs best player and was not even close. In a system much closer of actual Berube system than keefe system

2- When the system asking for cycling until something opening vs attavking the net and make thing happen, you will not take he same kind of decision on the ice.2 complete different type of game, Its pretty simple to understand.

3- Marner don't have a pretty strong shot so if he want to be useful, he need to attack the net to score and get people in front of net net to create kind of shot/pass for deflect/ rebound from distance.

Keefe is more a system based on skills and speed, Berube system based on 1v1 battle and team commitment.

Both having good and bad thing coming with...

I have a hard time blaming the system for Marner's failures considering it doesn't seem to be an issue for the first 86 games of the season.

 

[thusk]

I have a hard time blaming the system for Marner's failures considering it doesn't seem to be an issue for the first 86 games of the season.

playoff had been failures for marner, matthews, nylander, tavares, depht player and whatever you want... Its not different with marner than anyone else.

The only player who had been dominant from the beggining until the end of at least one complete series last 8 years is Marner in 2018 vs Boston...

 

[Gary Nylund]

playoff had been failures for marner, matthews, nylander, tavares, depht player and whatever you want... Its not different with marner than anyone else.

The only player who had been dominant from the beggining until the end of at least one complete series last 8 years is Marner in 2018 vs Boston...

Looking at individual performances regular season compared to playoffs, JT drops off the most, Marner's close behind, then Matthews. Nylander however hasn't dropped off at all. The numbers have been posted many times.

 

[Racer88]

Is Florida not a contender?

They have 48 million tied up in 4 forwards + goaltenders.

We have 50 million tied up in the same.

We have the same money for depth and D spending.

Tell me how these "facts" don't apply to Florida.

I’m sure you must understand the difference on spending the bulk of your 48-50 million an 4 forwards and peanuts on goaltending and spending your 48-50 million more balanced between the forwards and goal tending……….or maybe you don’t

 

[thewave]

MM AM wasted, they are not clicking. Would say the same if WN and JT weren't clicking as well. Fact I have to say that, very Marnesque

 

[thusk]

Looking at individual performances regular season compared to playoffs, JT drops off the most, Marner's close behind, then Matthews. Nylander however hasn't dropped off at all. The numbers have been posted many times.

pts doesn't neccessairly meaning you're playing good hockey and played a great series...

Overall since nylander became a +/- ppg player( so since 2021) his production come playoff are at 84 % vs regular season and marner at 82%. The fact Nylander had been worst in regular season in the first 5 season change nothing for the player hes right now and expectation now coming with a 11,5M contract... Just like that...

 

[Gary Nylund]

pts doesn't neccessairly meaning you're playing good hockey and played a great series...

Overall since nylander became a +/- ppg player( so since 2021) his production come playoff are at 84 % vs regular season and marner at 82%. The fact Nylander had been worst in regular season in the first 5 season change nothing for the player hes right now and expectation now coming with a 11,5M contract... Just like that...

Over Marner's career he goes from a 100 point player to a 40 point player after game 4 of the playoffs. I think it's hard to argue that that doesn't mean anything, in fact I'd say that's just really bad. Overall, he goes from a 100 point player to a 70 point player in the playoffs, again I think it's hard to argue that that doesn't mean anything.

With the bigger cap hit comes higher expectations, that's true of course. And the same will be true for Marner, at least I assume he'll be in a higher salary bracket next season, we'll see.

 

[Martin Skoula]

I’m sure you must understand the difference on spending the bulk of your 48-50 million an 4 forwards and peanuts on goaltending and spending your 48-50 million more balanced between the forwards and goal tending……….or maybe you don’t

Spending 10.5 on a goalie is getting you .892 sv% right now and the peanuts are doing better. Most cup winning goalies are at an average second liner cap hit or lower when they win, I think O’Rielly was the cheapest inflation-adjusted cup winning top forward at 7.5. Lundqvist, Price, Rinne have a grand total of 0 cups between them, Bobrovsky is the exception. You can win with a literal AHL call up like Binnington or Hill getting hot at the right time, show me a 1C or 1W getting called up mid-season and leading playoff scoring at 900k.

 

[Stephen]

U could pay kadri and ROR the money u pay for 1 marner
I think I'd take that in heartbeat

I don’t think you want the 2025 version of that duo.

 

[LeafEgo]

Obviously it would be better if the core wasn’t paid as much as they are but the problem isn’t a lack of cap, it’s that when we have cap space we waste it on pieces that don’t solve problems. Other contenders don’t spend 2.4 on a 4th line C and 1.4 on a 40 year old enforcer that doesn’t even have a permanent spot in a healthy 12 man group, that money goes to their tier 2 Verhaghe/Bennet/Hagel/Cirelli/Nichushkin/Lehkonen group that can regularly impact a series positively. Our best bottom 6ers are regularly our cheapest, it’s the 1.5-4.5mil range guys that continually disappoint. Condensing those down into a single 5-6 mil guy and pushing everyone else down a slot would go a lot further than chasing the premium grinder of the next FA class with a 3 mil deal.

Acquiring a tier-2 forward by shaking down the bottom would require us to have seven min wagers.

Those tier-2 players are half the price of our forward stars, but those teams only have three stars and not the fourth, so they get two tier-2s instead of one star. Notwithstanding that their stars are cheaper as well to the tune of a whole nother tier-2 player.

The brass tacks is we're missing a middle tier up front for no other reason than the cost of the stars, with the counterpoint being that they can make up for it and then some.

 

[arso40]

Definitely ah either or kinda thing

 

[Martin Skoula]

Acquiring a tier-2 forward by shaking down the bottom would require us to have seven min wagers.

Those tier-2 players are half the price of our forward stars, but those teams only have three stars and not the fourth, so they get two tier-2s instead of one star. Notwithstanding that their stars are cheaper as well to the tune of a whole nother tier-2 player.

The brass tacks is we're missing a middle tier up front for no other reason than the cost of the stars, with the counterpoint being that they can make up for it and then some.

Even if we assume the Tavares discount = the Marner raise on their next contracts, adding a Verhaeghe or Hagel would cost Domi + Kampf + Reaves. And that’s their UFA cost after putting up good seasons in the 3-5 mil range.

Again prior to this game the Kampf/Domi/Reaves group at 7-something mil combined had 0 goals, replacing them with minimum wagers would a sideways move at worst. If Domi picks it up from here that changes the calculus but so far we’ve survived 2 months getting minimum wage production from middle class cap hits.