You wanted do nothing tough enforcers that would protect the team, you got Ryan Reaves.
You wanted a big name D-man, you got John Klingberg.
You wanted some snarl in the top 6, you got Max Domi and Tyler Bertuzzi.
You wanted a hockey man with lots of experience in charge of things, you got Brad Treliving who has 10 years of being a GM.
You were tired of the nerds running things, so now you have a team that has been caved in on expected goals this season.
You got what you wanted, you just didn't know what this team needed.
The problem with the Leafs over the last few seasons:
1) Goaltending - We haven't really gotten a stable solution since Andersen was here. I'm a Dubas guy but he does have a big weakness when it comes to evaluating goaltenders.
2) Transition Defense - This is something that dates back to the Columbus series. The Leafs are a slow skating team on the back end with Morgan Rielly as the only truly fast skater so they are suseptible to counter attacking teams. This was probably most clearly shown in the Montreal series; Montreal only scored 1 goal off of a sustained forecheck that entire series, the rest of their goals came on special teams (3) and or rush attacks. Justin Bourne after that series noted that Montreal that season relied more on transition offense than any other team in the league and Toronto was one of the worst at transition defense. The Leafs countered this by playing a heavy posession offense which. This problem would pop up vs Tampa the next season and Florida the season after. Florida in our most recent series scored 80% of their goals off rush attacks and not heavy forechecking as people here think.
3) Transition Offense - Basically the other side of the coin as above. This team only has two players who are truly good at transition offense - Nylander and Reilly. Most of the lines are built for heavy posession game. Not that there's anything wrong with that but you do need a balance. Teams that are too one dimensional don't go far.
None of these things were solved in the off season.
All that is nice and dandy because in a sense you're sort of right let's have a look shall we?
Leafs Nation wanted team toughness which isn't the same as a face puncher, but it would have been a good start if that face puncher would have been a 5 years younger Mike Wilson. I don't believe I heard one person here saying "gee how bout Reavo, he'd be good!"
Bertuzzi is a guy who has twice scored 20 and once hit 30 while having some injury problems to contend with. He has also been a notorious slow starter in his career. He's also been known to be a shift disturber and a guy who doesnt back down, which is something we didn't have, unless you think that guy was Bunts. Bert may finally be in the right spot as LW with 91 and 88. It's possible this is what will work for him.
Domi is another guy who's had varying degrees of success in the league, his success was "always while playing centre;" well he's now finally at 3centre where he should've been instead of on his off wing while they waited to see if Mintz was ready or Kampf was ready. Domi is now where he should be, so we'll just wait and see.
Unless we're talking 3 years ago nobody was clamouring for John Klingberg to be signed and certainly not at 7mX7, though there could've still been some LeaFlanders willing to pay him that, nobody in Leafs Nation said anything about this guy.
As far as all the transition offense/defence hoo-haw. Sheldon is a 2-1-2 guy with a right rotation PP, it's a formula used by a number of coach's in the league, and goes back to Toe Blake. If it were me though I'm a 2-3 guy when it comes to defending my end 5v5, and a 1-2-1 PP guy.
