Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
The boys don’t hate to lose. No dogs. And don’t kid yourselves – 16 is WALKING AWAY from this team.
Look up ‘organizational failure’ in a sports dictionary and you’ll see the Shanahan era Leafs as the first entry.
~fifty mission capI figure Shanahan is gone, Treliving and Berube are safe.
Marner is gone. He has no supporters left here. The crowd booed him any time he touched the puck at the end of the game. Trade him at the draft for whatever paltry picks you can fetch from an interested team, or participate in a sign & trade for him to get his 8th year. Let him go somewhere else and vanish when the going gets tough.
Tavares played well enough to return, but not well enough to warrant even $7m on his next deal. Even losing Marner and JT makes you wonder if the addition of toughness would really alter this group very much.
Rielly had moments when the physicality wasn’t that amped up, but once Florida started to forecheck, he wilted and reverted to missing pucks, losing battles and not physically engaging on the boards where it was required. In the end he contributed little and cost more. I’d try and move him. Buying him out would be just too long (10 years).
I wouldn’t trade Matthews at his lowest value and I’m expecting he was playing hurt all season; while he was almost a P/G in the playoffs he was not himself and was too infrequently not an asset.
I don’t know what happened to Willy either. He just vanished and didn’t engage way too often. It was enigma-Willy – playing when he felt like it.
On the plus side there were bright spots other than the D and G – Obviously Knies, but the lesser sung guys like Lorentz, Laughton, Pacioretty and at times Holmberg were all pretty good. Kampf, Jarnkrok and Robertson might be done as Leafs.
An honest assessment? They made it further than they have under Matthews – not far enough obviously – but there’s progress there. They need toughness in the forwards and from the forwards. Still too many guys who are easily pushed around and cowed. It’s disappointing and their ability to not compete at critical times was probably more obvious this year than any other year. And this under a coach who preaches competitiveness more than the last one. I would imagine they need to figure out where that rot is and weed it out.
Knies and Nylander have been the Leafs two best forwards
~MiB
Nylander has been inconsistent. Pucks skipping his stick, and he’s been too passive on pucks. Maybe he’s taking a more defensive posture, but it reads as tentative to me. He has all the tools to be the best gamebreaker on the ice at any given point, though. Unless that bastard Pastrnak is also on the ice.
How had nobody mentioned Aki Berg?!?
~Whipper
In our vast history of un-great 8’s, Aki Berg is actually near the top. I mean we had better guys like Ellis, Tanev, Muzzin, Sid Smith . . . but there’s a lot of guys who played like 2-3 games for the Leafs wearing #8. I haven’t heard of most them. Jim Dorey? I think his brother John is a fish. Richard Mulhern? Wasn’t he the Nightstalker? Rich Costello – the guy we traded Sittler for? Screw that guy. Les Kozak? Maybe HE was the Nightstalker. I’m sure one of these guys was.
But if we’re seeking criteria by which we can name Aki Berg good at anything, I think that’s the range we’ll need to get to. “Who was the best at wearing #8 in 2002?”
Wow, I didn’t think I would see Leeman on anyone’s list!
~Wedgie
If you’re referring to my reference to him above – I wouldn’t say he was a favourite by any stretch of the imagination but when you list the best players for the Leafs by decade, he does fit in a category.
That’s a tough one. You’d almost need like a playoff bracket type poll because age, interest, investment – they all play a part in who you glommed onto. I just sort of figure, from a sort of personal perspective, that you look at it by era as
70s Leafs (340-330-122; 7th in total points over the decade)
Sittler
McDonald
Salming
Palmateer
Williams80s Leafs (266-441-93; 20th in total points (out of 21) over the decade)
Vaive
Leeman
Olczyk
Paiement
Bester
Wregget90s Leafs (345-346-92; 15th in total points (out of 28) over the decade)
Gilmour
Clark
Andreychuk
Thomas
Yushkevich
Joseph
Potvin00s Leafs (350-278-110; 11th in total points (out of 30) over the decade)
Sundin
Roberts
Mogilny
Kaberle
McCabe
Belfour
Tucker
Domi2010 – present Leafs (603-424-131; 10th in total points (out of 32) over the decade)
Matthews
Marner
Tavares
Nylander
Kessell
van Riemsdyk
Kadri
Rielly
Andersen
Stolarz
Reimer
BernierAnd for me, there was Palmateer, Sittler, Vaive, Gilmour, Sundin and Matthews.
I think Gilmour may have been the most passionate and skilled player I’ve seen wear the Leaf, but Matthews is probably the most skilled.
As a fan, Gilmour gave me the best moments.
How the hell do you reply to messages here lol I’m having a lot of issues with this site. Hopefully it works out.
~bryant
As dmnted said, you would copy & paste the text you want (and you have to manually type the username in if you want to), and then use the B-Quote control above, or at least put the text inside of a ‘<‘blockquote’>’ bracket, using the same close bracket system with ‘</’ that you did on HB.
It’s what I was alluding to principally when I noted that I was hoping they were going to keep working on the site!
This is starting to feel like when the pga tour had the liv tour come and take some stars. Now we have split sites when with half and half and the tour suffered for years.
~bryantI make the assumption that they will continue to work on this site. I have some concerns about HB. I was never banned or anything but you would see other people being banned for absurd times, no answers, no responses and no communication from the people in charge. When MiB left, I tried to communicate with just about anyone there – and mostly I found people who had already left. It doesn’t feel like it’s got a lot of runway left.
I think at some point HB is just going to be AA and Joel hate posting at each other every 6 minutes with Strider popping in every 13 days to say something insanely conspiratorial; it’ll be like a Sartre play without any existential crisis.
Ummm the panthers traded away Huberdeau, who had 115pts, and were in the cup finals the next season and won a cup a season after that.
Its difficult to have depth players when you have so much cap tied up in 4 forwards.
JT’s cap will pretty much go to Knies($8 – $9m of it anyway), I’m ok with moving out Rielly if the leafs blow this series.
There needs to be some sort of big change.Anywho, Leafs are still in the series. Must win tonight, hopefully woll can keep it together and our $40m players score some goals.
~fakepartofmeI do want to say that I basically agree with you. If you lost Marner but replaced him with guys who show up or are miserable to play against in the playoffs – Bennett and Rielly Smith come to mind – it would change the dynamic of the team. They might be not as offensive, but they might be better equipped in the playoffs.
That said, Marner – and I’ve said before – may not really be the problem. Matthews is the alpha dog on that team. People get him the puck – they seek him out, and Marner is no exception. They have absurd levels of faith in one another – it’s how you build a good team – and it probably blinds them to some of the weaknesses of a player’s game. They want to see Matthews succeed, so they aren’t going to pass up the opportunity to get him the puck either (it reminds me of Sundin against Carolina in 2002).
The regular season is different, no doubt, but when together over the past two seasons – both Marner and Matthews average 1.2 pts/game. When apart, Marner averages 1.5 / game, and Matthews averages 1.6 / game.
But in counteraction to your point about Huberdeau – trading a 115 player, who is a great distributor, but not too difficult to play against and in return getting a 109 point player who is much more difficult to play against? I mean if that trade were available, you’re not really trading away your leading scorer and filling his role with notably lesser guys (and realistically Bennett is FAR from Marner) – you’re upgrading. But that just isn’t available now.
I’m curious about what’s going on with Matthews. My theory is this: He’s got a shoulder injury that’s affecting his shoulder mobility. It’s really causing his shooting accuracy to be off. Other than that, everything else works. When he went to Germany, they probably told him; you can continue to play but your shoulder issues will be an issue for the rest of the season. You can still play well defensively, but there’ll be a slight weakness to shoot. He was probably given a choice; shut it down and do surgery immediately, but your season will be over and you’ll need months of rehab. The other option was to play with what you’ve got, mobility-wise, and contribute defensively and still pick up some goals and assists. He chose to take the shot at winning it all this year, with the cast of players that the Leafs currently have. Knowing that Marner would probably be either moved, or leave as a UFA, he chose to try for the Cup.
It’s obvious that he’s not shooting the puck with accuracy and zip. He can still turn his wrists over to take faceoffs and make passes. As a betting man, I’d think that it’s something of this magnitude.
~PrinceLHIf we take the things they have said to us at face value, then we know:
– It will take a while to heal
– Playing doesn’t make it worse
– Rest won’t make it better, only time willTake this for what it’s worth because I really don’t know – but I had one of those friend’s neighbour’s brother . . . type of things, and I heard that was a bruised or lacerated organ . . . from what I read if it’s the liver it’s 4-6 months to heal on the outside and if it’s the kidney it could be to 12, but the kidney runs more risks of playing making it worse. From that – and just because I know this friend isn’t one to make stuff up or believe things easily – it makes me think it could literally be a liver injury.
Meh. After the first the only line that seemed to be consistently effective was the Lorentz-Laughton line. Nylander had a surprisingly poor night given how good he’s been all playoffs and Matthews just vanished after the first.
Benoit has his moments but he’s struggled at times to keep up with Florida. There’s lots of little minor complaints to go around but it was an OT game and Woll allowed a goal that was highly unfortunate. This team as a whole is a different Leafs team and there’s a lot of reasons to have faith in them. I’d also, quite sincerely, expect Woll to be better next game. He just never really found his game tonight.
