Tavares is a great human being. He’s a really nice guy. Dedicated. Good pro. But his teams lose playoff games because he’s not good enough where it matters.
When Berube says he wants Tavares back, he wants the person back. But the player, the stats have proven, is a loser. He’s too slow, he’s too shit defensively and offensively, vs Florida, he did nothing in 6 out of 7 games, including the PP which sucked.
“Saving” money with Tavares won’t make a damn difference when you have to spend the money you “saved” to make up for his obvious deficiencies. If they’re smart, they won’t take back Tavares unless he’s on a Corey Perry contract. Anything more than that is a self inflicted gunshot wound to the Leafs playoff success hopes.
When Tre and Berube sit down and look at the tape, when they investigate the reasons they lost the games they lost to the Panthers, they will see that Tavares was a problem and that Marner was the reason why they actually won games. And if they don’t, the team will fail. It’s that simple.
Oh so Berube saying he wants JT back 100% is really untrue but we are supposed to believe he loves every single part of Marner’s game top to bottom and when he said 100% THAT TIME he meant it but not the other time? lol Really?
If you are saying JT shouldn’t be back because he’s ‘a loser’ you have to acknowledge the same lack of success Marner has had at the NHL playoff level don’t you?
JT is slow, Marner is soft, JT was shitty offensively vs Florida, Marner was a VERY far cry from the 100 point player he was all season.
Marner had 1 goal in the entire series, went pointless in games 5 and 7 and was a -2 in both games and got a gravy assist on a shovel pass in game 6. If you want to talk about JT not performing in Florida that’s fine and true but let’s also acknowledge that Marner was not good either. Marner had 1 point in the last 4 games of the series, a series in which THEY BOTH sucked offensively.
You undervalue JT to a drastic degree for whatever reason – you can hate him that’s fine but pretending he only brings the value that a Corey Perry does to a team is just so far from the truth. JT on the open market would get 4 M or more from many teams – he’s not a 1M player.
If you want to talk about saving money to create a more balanced roster the move is obvious and likely the one that will happen, (much to your obvious displeasure) and Marner will walk and the Leafs will have 13M or more of cap space to use on creating that balance. The concept that they have to spend money to support JT or what you claim are his weaknesses is fine, Mitch Marner alone can’t bring success to this team so they would or will have to spend money to make that happen to overcome the things missing in his game (size, toughness to start) as well as a sniper to finish his passes. If you want to go down that path then you can say some of what the Leafs pay Matthews is for that exact reason.
Finally as far as ‘when’ Tre and Berube look at the tapes to try and figure out why they lost – you seriously don’t think they have done that already and Berube is saying he 100% wants JT back and will suddenly change his mind when he finally does so? You can’t possibly be serious on this.