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Toronto Maple Leafs are surprisingly underperforming

Michel Beauchamp said:
Not in the post I quoted.
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Right, I also didn't note the sky is blue. Doesn't make it untrue. It was just irrelevant to my point.

It's been the Leafs way for years. Put up a stinker against poor teams, show up and win against the better. It has been a pattern for a while. (Except at the most important times)

It's also something that has been brought up plenty, especially this season.
 
Kelly said:
Right, I also didn't note the sky is blue. Doesn't make it untrue. It was just irrelevant to my point.
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Irrelevant?

The quality of the competition against whom they lost in their first 8 games last season vs this season is irrelevant?

That's called sweeping important facts under the rug...
 
Every "good team" will play down or just lose to a "bad team" here and there. Go look at Colorado's start last year. They lost to a bunch of bad teams as well.

The key is not to keep doing it and have it become a pattern
 
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They're underperforming and tied with Florida and Colorado in the standings, so I'll be sure to keep my eyes open for the threads discussing their poor start as well
 
I always think the first 10 games are meaningless aside from the points a team banks

I've seen too many times where a team is hot to start and falls apart. Or vice versa. I remember this for individual players too. Wasn't Ignila notorious for this?
 
They have a better record than last season through the same number of games.
 
Divine said:
They have a better record than last season through the same number of games.
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Did they play teams the quality of SJ, Arizona and Montreal last year too? You know, the three worst teams on paper in the league ?
 
nbwingsfan said:
Did they play teams the quality of SJ, Arizona and Montreal last year too? You know, the three worst teams on paper in the league ?
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Yeah, they did.

They didn't have 3D and a goalie on LTIR to start the season last season though.
 
nbwingsfan said:
A couple bottom pair D and a backup goalie.

Have you seen how a Boston has faired without a top 5D in the world, a top 10W in the world, and various other injuries?

Injuries are a sad excuse
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Yeah, you're right - everyone predicted injuries to have no impact on Boston.

Still a better record than last year, they'll be okay.

They're 4-1 with Samsonov in net (only lost to the Golden Knights). What you're not realizing is the Leafs have to play their #4G because both their #2G (Murray) and #3G (Woll) are both injured.. and the number 4 goalie is putting up an .857 save percentage, not going to win many games with that.. in fact, he hasn't won any.

They also have to play 7th and 8th d-men due to injuries.
 
I’m not sure it’s surprising. They downgraded their depth and goaltending and three of their four top D are well on the wrong side of 30 years old. I also don’t think it’s realistic to expect Matthews to replicate a Hart, Rocket and Lindsay year.
Some regression was to be expected.
 
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SheldonJPlankton said:
The Habs have their #1 goalie and 2 top defenseman injured. They still beat the Leafs with less talent but more character.
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Yeah the Leaf injury excuse is pretty lame. One bottom pairing D, a depth D, a goalie who has an injury history and a top four D well over 30 years old who has been injured a lot lately. That’s no different than most teams and much of it was pretty predictable.
 
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WetcoastOrca said:
They’ll still finish top 10. A lot of us predicted they’d take a step back with the loss of depth, defense getting older and questionable goaltending.
Still a solid team that should improve once Matthews and Marner heat up.
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Defense getting older? If anything their defense got better. Sandin and Lilj (who has been hurt to start the year) are a year older. Full season of Gio. Muzzin I mean nobody expected him to be around anymore really.
 
SheldonJPlankton said:
The Habs have their #1 goalie and 2 top defenseman injured. They still beat the Leafs with less talent but more character.
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Lol, they beat the Leafs due to poor goaltending. What were the shots, 32-23? Let me guess, those were 23 character shots :sarcasm:

Usually a bad team will beat a better team if that better team is getting .826 goaltending.
 
Divine said:
The 'pretending' Leafs are one of two teams who took the Lightning to an elimination game the last 3 seasons who didn't win the Cup. They're the only team to take a 'non-playoff' Montreal team to an elimination game who didn't win the Cup.

So the notion the Leafs are pretenders but TB is legit makes no sense. TB was a phantom high sticking penalty away from getting eliminated by the Leafs. That phantom high sticking penalty directly resulted in a 2 min 5on3 in an elimination game where the Lightning were getting dominated. With Montreal, the Leafs lost their captain in Game 1 of the series. The Leafs got unlucky in the playoffs due to injuries/phantom calls.

If the Leafs benefitted from Covid, the Lightning did 10 fold. The Lightning also got to go 17M over the cap because the season was 56 games instead of 82 (Kucherov wouldn't stay on LTIR for 82 games as he was healthy for Game 1 of the playoffs), that's way, way, way bigger of an advantage than the North division - as it's a playoff based advantage as a direct result of the Covid shortened season.
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I’ve said like 20 times in different threads that the leafs (and dubas) don’t get enough credit for that first round, and that they gave the Bolts their second toughest matchup of the year; and that the “first round” leafs meme is fun and all but people put too much stock in round number. It’s matchups. Losing to Tampa is losing to Tampa


I don’t consider last year a Covid year, at least not nearly to the degree as the 2020 bubble and season leading into the 2021 playoffs, given the loads of extra shit like the play-ins + teams coming back from a long break in different degrees of prepared in 2020, and the weird uneven division format in 2021 (bolts having a much harder division to break from)


As I said I had assumed the other poster was talking about those years and I was mostly addressing those years,

and more so primarily addressing your comparison of the leafs to the bolts as way over simplified. I was just saying regardless of extra noise going on in 2020 and 2021, the Bolts had wayyyy more than proven themselves in the regular season and playoffs to that point and beat multiple legit great teams each year. The whole “COVID cups” narrative has always been ridiculous because there was too much evidence they were legit before COVID. With the young stars and coaching change, and lack of previous success one could argue (not definitively, just saying it’s a discussion) that COVID might have muddied the picture with the leafs

Whatever argument someone makes of the Leafs, there’s really no comparing them to the Bolts, completely different everything;

One can argue for or against the idea that the Canada division made the leafs look better than they were that year and the year prior, but you can literally only argue against anything incorrectly making the Bolts look better than they were. I was addressing your comparison more than the leafs
 
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They look uninspired and are playing like complete shit. They genuinely look like they don't give a f*** about winning hockey games and rather just go through the motions, very frustrating. It's early on in the season, last season it was the same shit, but when a coach/leadership group can't get their teams prepared to show up for professional games it's alarming. If this nonsense persists for another 3-4 weeks there better be some major f***ing changes happening.
 
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