The leafs have been bounced for 9 years straight in the 1st or 2nd round. So no difference.
Only now we dont have to watch marner float for the final 3 games of a playoff round.Wrong. Panthers are going to be the same and the Leafs took them to 7. If they dumped Tavares and Rielly, brought in two-way centers to play 2C and 3C via trade, they could have had a chance.
This team is just going to be stitched together with pieces of scrap held together with chewing gum.
So the Panthers presently have a cap of $95.933m, which is over the cap. They have 12 forwards signed, 6 defenseman and 1 goalie. They traded for Tarasov but he’s an RFA – assume he’s around $1m. Samoskevich is also unsigned.
I’d guess Rodrigues is going to be traded to fit in a goalie ($1m) and Samoskevich ($1.5m), leaving them with about $70k and no spares on their roster of 20. The first non-LTIR injury is going to be a bitch. We watched Dubas try and run that gauntlet.
Bottom line: Florida is getting older, they have played a lot of hockey and they are losing pieces and putting themselves into precarious positions to try and hold it together. It’s a bold strategy and they have all the right character assholes to win again, but I’m not sure if it’ll hold together again.
Quite sincerely Mitch Marner’s presence wasn’t what took us to game 7 – Marner had 1 point in the final 4 games of the series. He had decent results killing penalties – but truthfully the whole team did an admirable job there, led largely by Laughton and Lorentz, but credit is due to Marner there.
In those final 4 games, Domi had 3 points, McMann 2, and then Patches, Marner, Lorentz, Matthews and Robertson each had 1. Marner isn’t the solution, he’s been part of the problem.