Trades and Free Agency - 2022 Off-season

[SeaOfBlue]

For everyone's reference:

Last 27 games 2019-20 season.

Nobody is disputing the record.

He is saying that Rielly and Muzzin were also out for extended periods of times (Ceci was as well, as much as people liked to crap on him), and Andersen was one of the worst starters in the league at the same time.

If any team loses two of their top defensemen and their goalie plays like crap, most are probably not doing much better than .500 (if that). Although you are making it sound like that is what the team was when it wasn't. It was what the team was with terrible goaltending and missing two key players for extended periods of time. The team, even with all of that, was still projected to make the playoffs, and if they were not making the playoffs, it would be due to the sub .500 hockey we witnessed at the beginning of the year (with much better goaltending and fewer key injuries) than under the new coach.

Keefe has been HC for almost 200 games now, and I don't think he has come close to a sub .500 stretch over 20 games. At the very worst moments, he was 2 or 3 points above .500... And those stretches were often with historically awful goaltending or serious injuries. Even with historically awful goaltending for a very long time, he was still able to put up a franchise record in points this year.

 

[Dekes For Days]

My point earlier was that the 2019-20 roster just wasn’t good enough and picking 13OA wasn’t unjustified.

The 2019-2020 roster was better than the record they ended up with, and that record still had them as the 13th best team in the league and in a playoff spot - which by the rules that the trade was made under, would have meant that their pick landed later than 13th overall.

There’s a 50 game stretch outside of the Keefe honeymoon phase where they played .500 hockey.

Honeymoon phases don't exist. And even if they did exist, there's no reason it would randomly end on January 5th. There's a ~50 game stretch after Babcock was fired where they played at a 103 point pace, and you don't need to arbitrarily cherry pick and patch together different portions of the season to see it.

 

[Americanadian]

Nobody is disputing the record.

He is saying that Rielly and Muzzin were also out for extended periods of times (Ceci was as well, as much as people liked to crap on him), and Andersen was one of the worst starters in the league at the same time.

If any team loses two of their top defensemen and their goalie plays like crap, most are probably not doing much better than .500 (if that). Although you are making it sound like that is what the team was when it wasn't. It was what the team was with terrible goaltending and missing two key players for extended periods of time. The team, even with all of that, was still projected to make the playoffs, and if they were not making the playoffs, it would be due to the sub .500 hockey we witnessed at the beginning of the year (with much better goaltending and fewer key injuries) than under the new coach.

Keefe has been HC for almost 200 games now, and I don't think he has come close to a sub .500 stretch over 20 games. At the very worst moments, he was 2 or 3 points above .500... And those stretches were often with historically awful goaltending or serious injuries. Even with historically awful goaltending for a very long time, he was still able to put up a franchise record in points this year.

Absolutely agree on all points. My whole point is Babcock doesn’t take the blame for the Leafs picking 13th OA. Injuries happen, Babcock didn’t injure the defense.

The 2019-2020 roster was better than the record they ended up with, and that record still had them as the 13th best team in the league and in a playoff spot - which by the rules that the trade was made under, would have meant that their pick landed later than 13th overall.

Honeymoon phases don't exist. And even if they did exist, there's no reason it would randomly end on January 5th. There's a ~50 game stretch after Babcock was fired where they played at a 103 point pace, and you don't need to arbitrarily cherry pick and patch together different portions of the season to see it.

I thought you and I had agreed to move on here. We just aren’t going to see eye to eye on this. We live in different worlds when it comes to being Leafs fans.

 

[Americanadian]

How about we all move on, eh?

We live in different worlds when it comes to being Leafs fans.

Happy Friday!

 

[ACC1224]

Was the consensus the Marleau debacle was Dubas’ worst move or the Kadri debacle? Both are top 5 obviously.

 

[notdoneyet]

Was the consensus the Marleau debacle was Dubas’ worst move or the Kadri debacle? Both are top 5 obviously.

You can add foligno
You can add mrazek
You can add marchment

 

[ACC1224]

You can add foligno
You can add mrazek
You can add marchment

That makes 5.

 

[ULF_55]

Was the consensus the Marleau debacle was Dubas’ worst move or the Kadri debacle? Both are top 5 obviously.

Do we need see the finale of the Kadri trade?

Kadri was just UFA, Kerfoot could have a career year just like Kadri did on the final year of his contract.

This was far above Kadri's normal productivity. A complete outlier.

No I don't expect anything close to a career year, outlier for Kerfoot. I don't even expect him to be on the team.

 

[ULF_55]

You can add foligno
You can add mrazek
You can add marchment

Foligno is whatever, medical staff pooched, should have been aware he was broken.

Mrazek injured for most of the year. Cost 13 spots in the draft.

Marchment was close to a waiver loss. Would be nice to have him, but how much is he making and how do you fit him and his 1 year of success under the Cap?

 

[Kiwi]

Was the consensus the Marleau debacle was Dubas’ worst move or the Kadri debacle? Both are top 5 obviously.

The Marleau debacle was signing a clearly declining player to a 3 year high AAV deal we had no easy way of getting out of

That contract was a noose and the previous GM happily signed it, easily one of his worst mistakes

I'm more than willing to blame Dubas for the mistakes he's made but I'm not going to blame him for the mistakes of others

 

[conFABulator]

Thought the conversation was over to be fair. I appreciate you bringing a different team that didn’t include Barrie and Ceci into the discussion but it just creates further discussion unrelated to season at question.

My point earlier was that the 2019-20 roster just wasn’t good enough and picking 13OA wasn’t unjustified. There’s a 50 game stretch outside of the Keefe honeymoon phase where they played .500 hockey. Both coaches are represented in that 50 game stretch.

The roster has improved since then.

Sorry if I came in late or missed the context of your post.

I think this team has been too good to expect to be drafting 13OA...that year was an anomaly IMO.

Another way of looking at that year is that once they got rid of Babcock they played at a 102 point pace. Again, not sure why you are slicing and dicing as you are. It still seems arbitrary. Why is it a honeymoon? They have been very good since Keefe got here, period.

 

[Dreakmur]

Babcock deserved to be fired after the Boston series, and there was a report that upper management wanted to keep him, but we don't really know for sure what Dubas wanted. What we do know is that he definitely didn't sabotage himself and his team in order to fire him. That's obviously ridiculous.

If he didn't sabotage Babcock deliberately, he did it through incompetence. As I said, I'm giving Dubas the benefit of the doubt by assuming he knew exacty what he was doing.

Babcock was set up for success. He dug his own grave. And then the next coach did significantly better with the same group.

He dug his own grade by spitting in Dubas' face. You don't often win battles with your boss.

The roster was clearly worse than it was the year before. Not sure what success he was set up for.. and Keefe ended up losing to Columbus in the play-off, so I wouldn't call that significantly better.

 

[Stephen]

The Marleau debacle was signing a clearly declining player to a 3 year high AAV deal we had no easy way of getting out of

That contract was a noose and the previous GM happily signed it, easily one of his worst mistakes

I'm more than willing to blame Dubas for the mistakes he's made but I'm not going to blame him for the mistakes of others

Dubas technically didn't have to get rid of Marleau at all. He had one year remaining on his contract and was beyond awful for sure. But he could have actually kept him around for the one remaining year and the first round pick...

The other two small errors that forced him into this trade was signing Johnsson and Kapanen to a combined cap hit of $6.6 million. I say error because both players were pitched overboard the following year and really never lived up to their $3.4 and $3.2 million cap hits.

There's an alternative solution there where the Leafs could have read the book on those two a little more clearly and walked away in much better shape. Might all be hindsight and not totally fair, but shouldn't we expect elite management from an elite GM instead of inevitably crashing into every iceberg?

 

[All Mod Cons]

The Marleau debacle was signing a clearly declining player to a 3 year high AAV deal we had no easy way of getting out of

That contract was a noose and the previous GM happily signed it, easily one of his worst mistakes

I'm more than willing to blame Dubas for the mistakes he's made but I'm not going to blame him for the mistakes of others

What mistakes are you blaming Dubas for?

 

[notDatsyuk]

Was the consensus the Marleau debacle was Dubas’ worst move or the Kadri debacle? Both are top 5 obviously.

You can add foligno
You can add mrazek
You can add marchment

No. They were all brilliant coup d'etats by Dubas to flawlessly repair disastrous mistakes by Lou.

 

[ACC1224]

The Marleau debacle was signing a clearly declining player to a 3 year high AAV deal we had no easy way of getting out of

That contract was a noose and the previous GM happily signed it, easily one of his worst mistakes

I'm more than willing to blame Dubas for the mistakes he's made but I'm not going to blame him for the mistakes of others

Yes the signing was Lou Lams fault, Dubas didn’t sign him.

 

[andora]

No. They were all brilliant coup d'etats by Dubas to flawlessly repair disastrous mistakes by Lou.

What about wasting johnsson as a trade chip.. not trading him earlier

Same with Dermott.. didnt capitalize on his value a year and a half earlier than eventually did.

And i miss barabanov but understand that one

 

[Gallagbi]

Yes the signing was Lou Lams fault, Dubas didn’t sign him.

What do you see the alternatives as? Skip on JT or dump two solid middle 6 wingers to keep a heavily overpaid 4th liner is all i can come up with.

 

[al secord]

Still a top 5 team. Still elite talent. Still the most talented team of my old ass lifetime. Dubas is still GM.

Deal with it. Let's move on. Let's win a cup.

 

[Kiwi]

Dubas technically didn't have to get rid of Marleau at all. He had one year remaining on his contract and was beyond awful for sure. But he could have actually kept him around for the one remaining year and the first round pick...

The other two small errors that forced him into this trade was signing Johnsson and Kapanen to a combined cap hit of $6.6 million. I say error because both players were pitched overboard the following year and really never lived up to their $3.4 and $3.2 million cap hits.

There's an alternative solution there where the Leafs could have read the book on those two a little more clearly and walked away in much better shape. Might all be hindsight and not totally fair, but shouldn't we expect elite management from an elite GM instead of inevitably crashing into every iceberg?

So we were supposed to throw 2 young middle 6 wingers overboard so we could keep a broken down old as dirt Marleau during our contention window?

If Dubas had of done something that stupid people like you would be holding it against him as another mistake

What mistakes are you blaming Dubas for?

The Kadri trade was downright bad, there's no getting around that

The Mzarek deal sucked and was questionable the day we signed him

I haven't agreed with other stuff but I could understand the reasoning so I don't hold it against management

Yes the signing was Lou Lams fault, Dubas didn’t sign him.

As was what happened afterwards

It's not the cleaners fault there's **** on the carpet, he's just trying to fix it

 

[ACC1224]

So we were supposed to throw 2 young middle 6 wingers overboard so we could keep a broken down old as dirt Marleau during our contention window?

If Dubas had of done something that stupid people like you would be holding it against him as another mistake

The Kadri trade was downright bad, there's no getting around that

The Mzarek deal sucked and was questionable the day we signed him

I haven't agreed with other stuff but I could understand the reasoning so I don't hold it against management


As was what happened afterwards

It's not the cleaners fault there's **** on the carpet, he's just trying to fix it

Correct but it’s their fault if they don’t clean it.

 

[Dekes For Days]

If he didn't sabotage Babcock deliberately, he did it through incompetence.

He didn't sabotage Babcock at all. Babcock was set up for success, and he failed spectacularly all on his own.

The roster was clearly worse than it was the year before.

It wasn't "clearly worse than the year before". It's actually pretty normal for a team to take a step back when they have multiple star players go from ELC to proper contracts (and that wouldn't mean the GM "sabotaged" their team), but we were actually able to stay pretty close to (and even improve on) our previous roster with some effective management.

At forward, we had further development from Matthews, Marner, Nylander, Kapanen, and Johnsson, and a full year from Nylander.
The primary changes were Kadri, Marleau, Brown, Ennis, and Lindholm for Kerfoot, Spezza, Mikyehev, Engvall, and Timashov, who actually performed at a slightly higher average P/GP and brought more defensive ability.

On defense, we had further development from Dermott.
The primary changes were Zaitsev, (a broken down) Gardiner, Hainsey, and Ozhiganov for Muzzin, Barrie, Ceci, and Holl. That's a clear upgrade, and part of the reason our defensive results improved from bottom of the league to middle of the pack.

The only real change in goal was Sparks to Hutchinson, which wasn't a notable change.

We were anywhere from the same to better, which is why when the next coach came in, we played at a 103 point pace the rest of the way, despite significant injuries and Andersen falling off.

 

[Dekes For Days]

Correct but it’s their fault if they don’t clean it.

It was cleaned up. This is like blaming the cleaner instead of the person who actually did it, because cleaning the carpet cost some money.

 

[Coachcorner]

Evidently the chicago blackhawks are trading kane to the oilers with 50% retained. This deal will be huge for the whole nhl. The oilers are really driving hard now.

 

[Fogelhund]

Evidently the chicago blackhawks are trading kane to the oilers with 50% retained. This deal will be huge for the whole nhl. The oilers are really driving hard now.

But how? RNH or Hyman going the other way?