You misunderstood why I amplified that play. He avoids contact (look at tape from any playoff series outside of his first year or two), relies on edge work that he can't duplicate when there is much less space, and gets pressured to make poor plays.
I understand why you amplified that play. You think it exemplifies an issue, but the only issue is people thinking it's an issue. Marner doesn't avoid contact. When necessary, he takes hits to make plays, and engages physically himself. He just doesn't get crushed in bad positions for no reason, and doesn't generally default to using physicality to achieve goals that can be achieved through other equal or better options. And there's nothing wrong with that. Many great players won cups the same way. It's called playing to your strengths.
He has some of the best edgework and agility in the league, regular season and playoffs, and while everybody makes mistakes, he doesn't make an abnormal number of "poor plays". He is tasked with some of our most difficult situations and assignments in all game situations, and people don't seem to understand that he is our playmaker, and he is tasked with creating opportunities. People don't seem to understand that there is some inherent risk that goes hand in hand with generating opportunities, especially in the situations we have so often found ourselves in the playoffs - down early and having to push for offense against great teams getting world class goaltending. A well-supported attempt at chance generation with a reasonable level of risk not working out is often mistaken for a "poor play", but something not working out in that instance does not automatically make a play poor. Kucherov is an example of a player that has gotten many of the same criticisms, and yet many treat him like a playoff god. He's far from the only one.
I want players that can create space for themselves in the NHL playoffs, especially in elimination games.
Marner creates space for both himself and his teammates.
I wouldn't classify Nylander as a "crash and bang" player, yet he somehow adapts his game in the playoffs and takes contact to make plays, same with Matthews.
Nylander engages in contact even less than Marner, and is a worse player than Marner in the playoffs.
You explain away every playoff exit as "bad luck", which is insane.
No I don't. I just look at the actual reasons and context behind the exits, and how big the discrepancy actually was, instead of making blind assertions based exclusively on series outcome, and mistaking any correlation for causation. Our losses are disappointing, but they have been wildly overblown by people giving in to emotion over facts and reason. In fact, emotion based decisions over the past two years have just set this team backwards, and you're still advocating for one that would likely put the final nail in the coffin. Change is not inherently good.
And while wins and losses are not just "luck", "luck" and things outside of our control do play a big part in hockey, especially in small samples. Anybody in the game will say the same thing. That's why process is often emphasized over outcomes. Ironically, during the intermission last night, they interviewed Cooper, and they asked him: "If you had to give just one formula that you think makes a winning Stanley Cup team, what would it be?" His answer? " You have to go injury free. That's a big big part of it. You need to have luck on your side".
He also talked about the tiny margins. "Round one is complete chaos. I look back at the times when, you know, we're in a 5OT game against Columbus, in round 1 game 1, and we just lost to them the year before. We don't score that goal, I don't know if we'd even get out of that round."
That's why nobody does what you're advocating for. The margins are small, and one year does not define the next.
What 5 decades of actual failure, do you forget when previous teams made it further than this group has in the playoffs?
Who cares? They still lost. Sure, I love an extra couple weeks of enjoying hockey, but we still failed the objective of the playoffs. You don't get a consolation prize. You don't get to carry over the series wins to next year. 1 team wins, and the rest is just noise that all gets wiped away. As Pastrnak said in the prime series, "it doesn't matter at the end, you know? If you don't get the cup, it doesn't matter who moves on from the first round".
We had decades of having garbage teams. Even the few better years sprinkled in came with a very limited chance at a cup. I'm not willing to throw away the best chance we've had in a half century because some people are impatient and don't understand the complexities of hockey and the impacting factors to winning a cup in a 32 team, heavy parity league.
I'm betting you were born in the 90s and didn't start paying attention to hockey until 2004+ based on that statement.
Nope.
I simply think continually paying a core of 3 players 40+% of the cap won't work going forward.
Not only have you provided zero reasoning or better alternative, but they won't even make 40+% of our cap in as little as like 1 year.
