I’ll address both of you in a single post.
1. Funny how Tree keeps getting praise for filling out the roster but he didn’t need to trade one of the ‘core 4’ as both of you claimed he would HAVE to do to fix the defense. Funny how a Dubas trade and a free agent signing by Tree really helped solidify arguably the leagues best shut down pair.
2. What do you mean Tree did all the work? Tree didn’t draft a single player on the team and the youngest two guys contributing consistently are Knies (on the top line) and Woll who was excellent during the season and Stoly was only really anointed the starting goalie in the last couple weeks. Let’s not act like Tree made some brilliant move here.
3. Fairly certain Nylander was traded by Fifty like a 100 times in the past couple off seasons as “the core 4 would never work!” or so I was told. Also Marner but both Dubas and Tree have stuck to the “core 4” and are seeing results.
4. We all agree on Keefe though. He needs some more seasoning in the NHL as a coach if he wants to see real success.
5. Dubas doesn’t go without his warts but let’s not act like he didn’t do anything to the current line up. If it was upto you two the core 4 wouldn’t be here and neither would Carlo or Laughton because if I recall it was said “don’t trade any firsts until they prove they deserve it” or was it “JT takes up too much cap this year to do anything ‘major’ so just run out the season and REALLY go for it next year.”
6. Leafs still have to get past the Panthers but they’ve shown they are certainly different and a large part of that is on Berube and his D core. OEL/Carlo/Tanev are all excellent grabs by Tree.
~Aaron
One of the things I will give Dubas credit for was that was evolving certain attitudes as he went – his TDL acquisitions of guys like O’Reilly, Schenn, Lyubushkin, Acciari – even Foligno – showed that he was realizing that he needed his team to be tougher. The criticism he has to receive is that he not only failed to build these teams in the offseason where his team could grow into a style together but he also never addressed real stability in the net.
“Defense wins championships,” isn’t just a slogan. Occasionally a team with superior firepower overwhelms the opposition and defense be damned, but for the most part you have a team that just has a strong defensive approach supported by strong defensive players and they can often go far with some offensive punch thrown in.
I wasn’t really a fan of the Treliving hire – he seemed to have a fair bit of up and down in Calgary and it was hard to get a read on him – but if you look at the changes made under him, I see the following:
– Replace Keefe with Berube
– Not resign Bunting, Kerfoot, Giordano, Brodie, Aston-Reese, Lafferty, O’Reilly, Acciari, Gustafsson, Simmonds, Edmundson, Bertuzzi, Klingberg, Samsonov and Jones
– Sign Lorentz, Ekman-Larsson, Pacioretty and Stolarz
– Trade away Liljegren, Timmins, Dewar and Lafferty
– Acquire Tanev, Carlo, Laughton
His missteps, in my opinion were signing Klingberg and probably Reaves; given that Reaves is a $200k cap hit, I’m not sure that’s a major misstep.
So as much as I certainly will say that I misjudged him from his work in Calgary, I don’t think there’s much to complain about.