Reply To: Game 7 – Will these Leafs be heros or zeros?

[monkeypunk]

Here is a question
Lets say the Leafs now with Marner are a 105 point team. pretty much last season, a few less

How many points do the Leafs have in 2025-26 if..
-they dont re-sign marner and dont replace him
-replace him with Bennett
-replace with player of your choice (name them)

I guess it depends on what you’re looking at and how you’re looking at it. Marner both drives play and kills penalties. Bennett doesn’t kill penalties, but he did have a much higher Created xGoals – so he’s in the right places, doing the right things. I feel that if you could mix him in with Tavares and Nylander, you’ve made your second line a very dangerous line. With a healthy Matthews, it would be a resurgence, even with Marner gone – but Domi could offer a shadow of what Marner brought. You could seek out an Ehlers or a Boeser, but I’d much rather be targeting Marchand and other guys to recreate the bottom-6 with more compete and more defensive acumen to help improve the PK as a whole.

The area I’d see improvement is that you can improve the areas you can’t today due to dollar allocation which affects a larger percentage of the overall game (ie, Marner is on the ice for 33% of the game, but the other 67% does suffer as a result of the lack of rounded talent out there).