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Willy has to improve his defensive game, too often standing frozen in own zone with stick in the air and watching the puck.
This is recipe for disaster in playoffs. ALEX TMLYou won’t get an argument on that point from me!
I have NEVER defended Willy’s defensive game and you have to kinda’ wonder if perhaps Marner goes and Willy moves to L1 if the Captain can impart some more defensive accountability on him by showing him how to do it and actually stepping up as a captain and telling him to do it (along with Berube of course).
Marner’s defensive game is fantastic – sometimes elite (when he doesn’t try to get too fancy) but again in the late series games over the years Willy has been much more dependable and able to deliver offensively than Marner (yes this year being the exception).
Willy at 11M is better than Marner at 13 or more to me from the position of you can only keep one of those 2 – which I firmly believe is the way the Leafs need to proceed.
UG – Just so we are all clear these players are all going to magically take huge pay cuts because YOU SAY SO and everyone who points out that a guy making 3.5M is unlikely to agree to a 900K to 1M salary next year is crazy and wrong and stupid because again YOU SAY SO.
lol
And where was Nylander in games 5 and 7 – classic deflection and whataboutism with a dash of your fav go to – goalpost moving.
I posted a pic of the playoff stats for the entire playoffs to illustrate that there was no more production from Marner (who you keep crying they can’t afford to let go) in this years playoffs than there is from Nylander – in fact there was less.
Nevermind the fact this is the first year that Nylander no-showed in those critical games unlike Marner who has unfortunately made it a yearly tradition in late series games. Don’t believe me? Go look it up yourself.
Nobody said Nylander was good in games 5 or 7 jesus christ stop making shit up.
Thumbs up to this article, it’s a good overview of where the Leafs are and what they need to do moving forward. The only thing I’ll say is they need to build a team to beat a team LIKE the Panthers because even if the Panthers lose some key pieces and regress simply getting to the ECF is not a guarenteed cup win as Florida is the template most teams are now using to build their teams out. They will need to essentially build a team that can beat multiple teams that play and are built like this current Panthers team.
It’s doable but changes must be made to get there.
Whipper – re: avatar.
Thanks – assuming you mean the current one vs the Colton Orr after just KO’ing Paros I had up for a hot minute it’s from an ODR on the Severn River. Little slice of winter heaven.
Here are a couple more pics.
Fake – I think the problem (or the why to what you find funny) is these 2 guys just default to Marner to set up Matthews when they play together for the most part, if they were more of a 2 headed threat to score then teams would have a much harder time to defend them but they simply aren’t and IMO never will be.
Teams play Marner to pass to Matthews and Matthews to shoot when fed by Marner but when you separate them both appear more willing or able to do what they don’t do often enough when they play together (Matthews set up someone else / Marner to finish). This is one of the reasons why I have always preferred them on separate lines.
As far as me being too one sided towards one guy over the other ok fair but I’ll always be one sided towards a 2 way #1 centre who can score 50 + goals almost every year in his prime when healthy over a talented winger – most people would regardless of the names on the jerseys no?
I’ll add something additional. Considering Carolina and Florida both are “built the right way” and one of them has to lose this series like, you can build “tough” but it doesn’t matter because 31 teams a year lose. Colorado and the Blues and Kings all built the same way. Fuck the Oilers aren’t and they are in conference finals back to back years. -Aaron
Is Carolina built ‘the right way’ though? They struggled to score a lot all season and it may come to bite them in the ass now we will see.
I also feel like the Canes were riding super hot goaltending in Freddy that might be coming down to earth (Where have we see that before?) and Florida just has more scoring power than they do.It’s game 1 so it’s early and Canes have one of if not the best motivating coaches in the NHL so I expect them to come out alot differently in game 2. Flordia was riding the game 7 win high and Canes were rested but cold. I think game 2 is a lot closer and different but Florida is so unpredictable who knows – they looked dead in the water vs the Leafs until the 3rd period really of game 3 and then they were the Florida team from last year.
Florida is now the ‘template’ teams will build around and they used the Tampa template, who used the Boston template.
Nobody is mimicking what the Leafs have done for nearly a decade now & quite honestly to some degree Toronto was stupid and arrogant to think it would work and as much as we want to blame Shanny or Dubas specifically for trying to be creative and do something never done before that’s not entirely accurate. Toronto followed the old Oilers template just with more success but not enough.
Oilers drafted in the top 3 for several years landing Hall, RNH, Yakapov etc. and sure they made some terrible picks but they kept drafting high skill and no real grit guys and failed. Dubas had some quote about drafting for skill and trading for grit – that is 100% the old Oilers and they failed. The Leafs had better options and drafted better but they are what most organizations who are looking to re-build now or soon are looking at and saying “Jesus boys lets make sure we draft to try and balance our roster not like what the Leafs did”.
Boston, Tampa, Florida – all highly successful for years – all more successful than Toronto.
Time to stop trying to guess what the answer on the test is and copy someone else’s work (or in this case move stuff around to try and get it as close as you can to their work).
Not sure if this will work or not – trying to post the playoff stats for this year of Marner and Willy as a pic.
Ok I’ll say it – why are we obsessing about replacing Marner’s 100 points? He played PP1 and was the set up guy at the top of the PP umbrella so he racked up assists there as well as playing on L1 99% of the season with Matthews.
Matthews doesn’t need Marner to score, IMO Marner needs a sniper to score for him to rack up points.
Blaming the bottom 6 for the Leafs losing this series is about as stupid as blaming the fanbase for fuck sakes.
For anyone in love with this top 6 that’s fine they are amazing players it makes sense.
BUT
If you can’t get past that and don’t see any reason to change them enjoy never seeing this team get deeper in the playoffs than they have at this point.Just because someone thinks the core needs to be broken up and sees the 2 UFA’s as the easiest pieces to move to gain valuable cap space to strengthen the bottom 6, and toughen up the top 6 with a small change in some personnel doesn’t make them a ‘hater’ of a player, nor does it make them any less of a fan.
The entire concept of simply swapping out the bottom 6 with the belief this will allow the Leafs to success is a severly flawed plan in itself. Layer in unrealistic components of this plan such as a bottom 6 winger making 3.5M is suddenly going to agree to take 900K or that multiple players with full no movement clauses are going to magically agree to waive them just amplifies how insanely flawed this plan is.
Morgan Rielly would be great to move but it’s hard to even think he would agree to be moved for a minute.
Matthews being moved would be a colossal mistake, quite possibly the worst trade mistake the Leafs could every make in their history. Top line, 2 way centres who have shown they can score 50 or more goals are true unicorns. Should he be captain? Perhaps not but it’s the way the NHL has shifted the captaincy on most teams now where your ‘top player’ has to be your captain and it’s dumb but the Leafs couldn’t afford to not make that move really – who else did they have they could have given the C to? Rielly? They probalby should have left it with JT and then even gone with 4 A’s until it became clearer but here we are.
JT can come back on the cheap and save this team a lot of money, provide veteran leadership & retire a Leaf.
Willy just locked in for 8 years and it’s hard to think he would even consider a move – it’s obvious he loves Toronto.
I asked this before and the poster I asked it of course ignored the question but I’ll ask it again:
Who is the Mitch Marner on the most successful teams in the league? Who is Florida’s Mitch Marner for instance?
Who is their uber talented, soft and small playmaking (because he seems to have an aversion to shooting) winger making 11M and looking for 13 (likely more) per season long term who has proven to be ineffective *(like others yes)* in series clinching games and struggles mightily under that pressure?
Teams can’t afford to have a 13.5M franchise centre & 2 wingers making over 11M and balance the roster to have the grit, toughness and scoring they need to be successful in playoffs – that’s been proven by the Leafs to be an ineffective strategy.
Chicago with Towes and Kane is a great example – only having those 2 monster contracts allowed them to fill out a balanced roster with unreal supporting players, D etc.
If the Leafs re-up Marner and have Matthews at 13.5, Willy at 11 and Marner at 13 or more IMO we call all just expect to see more of the same come playoffs and that will just be the cherry on top of a wasted era.
I can’t wait to see what the situation is on July 2nd.
If this team doesn’t break up some of the core (and just losing JT isn’t making any change when you have Marner with his hand out for more and know Knies needs more because you can’t lose him) I won’t be happy at all.
If they traded Rielly and/or traded Willy and kept Marner and got a good return I’d say they parted ways with the wrong winger but I’d at least be happy they made a big move. Asking guys to waive no trade’s and having them say no is not making a move it’s exploring options, so if one or more of Marner, Willy, Rielly aren’t in a new team uniform next year then IMO the Leafs have failed and are destined to continue to not be good enough to be a top 4 team in this league.
