[monkeypunk]

Ugh boring final…imo
Hope edmonton gets in. The canes look done. After game 1, I said it was only one game for the canes, but they now look like their usual conference finals self.
Also, Freddy andersen is doing freddy andersen things again….someone on here was raving about freddy and how the leafs should have kept him…I laughed then and laugh now.

But ya, the canes may win a game.
~Fakepartofme

When you look at his overall stats, Andersen looks good. When you look at his pressure stats, Andersen is almost a torchbearer for the Leafs’ collective failures in closing out series. Obviously the problems continued with Campbell, Samsonov and Woll – but Andersen’s numbers were a seriously stark contrast (I had looked them up, but I don’t typically save that stuff when I look; I just get it and am sometimes surprised by it) between early series and Series clinching games.

Goalies at this level can be so undone by their own headspace. Remember Potvin? Always an excellent goalie but the last couple of years he had a tendency to allow a soft goal every other game or even more frequently. He was still typically well above league average in save percentage (usually being about top-10) – until his last season here, when he posted a .906, which was bang-on league average. The Leafs signed Curtis Joseph and Potvin just fell apart – save percentages of .885, .901, .900, all below the league averages. I don’t think he was ever the same. Even in 2001-2002, his last good season, he bounced back to .907 and league average was .908.

[monkeypunk]

A couple of you are busy fighting about this, but this is the data behind it since the real core group started together with the Leafs in 2016.

Using 5v5 stats only in the playoffs –

Morgan Rielly is +14 (60F / 46A)
Mitch Marner is +13 (46F / 33A)
Auston Matthews is +8 (47F / 39A)
William Nylander is +1 (43F / 42A)
John Tavares is -8 (25F / 33A)

In terms of G/60:

Marner: 2.54 F / 1.82 A
Rielly: 2.66 F / 1.99 A
Matthews: 2.52 F / 2.09 A
Nylander: 2.63 F / 2.57 A
Tavares: 2.01 F / 2.65 A

If you’re really getting into yet another Marner vs. Nylander argument – last year and 2019 were the only two playoff years that Nylander outperformed Marner in terms of his offensive output outweighing defensive liabilities.

But this really shouldn’t be about one vs the other. We know what they all bring to the table and we know what their liabilities are. Nylander will provide game breaking moments and Marner will provide more and sincerely better versatility.

The fact that in these playoffs Marner took elbows to the head, shots after the whistle and Nylander often just skated away and rarely to be seen in any of this answers the question as to whether Marner will deal with it.

But if Marner’s salary demands are in excess of $12m, the answer has to be no. If they sit in the same range as Nylander’s $11.5, you should try to figure out how to do it. Of course this also should note that if I were Mitch Marner and the entirety of Leaf Nation was booing me out of town, I’d go and make sure my new team beat the shit out of them when we played.

[monkeypunk]

Marner will get more than 11.5, and he should at this point. the cap is 88, if it hits 100, then 11.5 is the same as 13.06
Fans are going to adjust to higher cap and contract expectations… but fans are generally slow to move the needle on stuff like that
~senstrolltwo

Someone will probably do it – but if Rantanen is worth $12m, why is Marner worth more than $13m? It feels like . . .because Marner was already overpaid at $10.9m, opinion-wise his base increase starts from there instead of his salary being based on what he’s providing.

Since 2021 in the playoffs, Rantanen is 3rd in points/game (1.33). Marner, for the record, doesn’t suck like everyone thinks he does – he’s 21st @ 1.
Since 2021 in the season, Marner is 8th in points/game (1.27). Rantanen is 11th @ 1.22.

Now this isn’t fairly equivocal to only look at Rantanen but he is the most recent and there could have been a 1:1 trade for the two players, both in expiring deals, so the equivalence has been set for comparative purposes. People will bring up taxes but as much as perhaps you and I think it matters, all these agents keep publicly saying it doesn’t, so . . .

[monkeypunk]

Marner could re-sign with the Leafs. If they walk from him, I hope there is a clear direction and plan.

But they Leafs need to rebuild the bottom 6, the Panthers crushed them. Floridas top 3 scorers werent a huge factor. head to head against the LEafs top lines. But the bottom 6 couldnt keep up.

If that means spreading Marners money around thats fine also
~senstrolltwo

I think you have to let Marner go to market. The price on him shouldn’t exceed $11.5m. Ultimately we keep hearing from all the agents that taxes don’t matter, so if Rantanen is going to make $12m, he’s the bar. He’s crossed 100pts twice and has had more than 40 goals once and more than 50 goals once and has crossed 30 goals on 4 other occasions. Marner has crossed 100 points once and has crossed 30 goals twice; he prorates to over 100 points 5 times. He’s an excellent player but the Leafs will never insulate him to his best effect. Matthews is big, but he doesn’t play a hard enough game – if anything he’s like having two Marners on the ice at the same time. Knies is one part, but if you really wanted to see a guy like Marner excel, you do need some size around him. People love to shit on me for comparing Marner to Kane, but there are a lot of similarities there. Kane, through his prime years, had 123 points in 127 playoff games. Marner has 63 in 70. But Chicago, at their peak, surrounded Kane with size – guys who were over 6’3 and 210lbs and they used their size to effect. The irony is that for the Leafs to get the guys necessary to elevate Marner, they need to let Marner go.

The other thing that going to market likely does for Marner is that it realistically sets his price. If a cusping or growing team like San Jose or Utah or a good team like Carolina feel that Marner puts them over the top, see what they offer. If the market is that good for him, let him be their problem. I doubt he’d come back once the market set a price for him, but who knows? I still doubt he could command more than Rantanen.

WRT to the bottom-6 – I thought Laughton and Lorentz were generally good – I thought both Jarnkrok and Kampf (in his limited audition) were just plain bad. Most importantly, and probably to your point, I thought the Domi line lacked identity and purpose. Domi isn’t a checking line guy. It’s just not his skillset. I thought Holmberg showed all sorts of effort and a complete lack of execution. McMann had a terrible playoffs and most of the time Domi seemed stuffed between those two.

I do think Robertson has run his course and if they can offload Jarnkrok and Kampf it sure would make sense.

[monkeypunk]

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 cap

I 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.

[monkeypunk]

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.

[monkeypunk]

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?”

[monkeypunk]

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.

[monkeypunk]

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
Williams

80s Leafs (266-441-93; 20th in total points (out of 21) over the decade)

Vaive
Leeman
Olczyk
Paiement
Bester
Wregget

90s Leafs (345-346-92; 15th in total points (out of 28) over the decade)

Gilmour
Clark
Andreychuk
Thomas
Yushkevich
Joseph
Potvin

00s Leafs (350-278-110; 11th in total points (out of 30) over the decade)

Sundin
Roberts
Mogilny
Kaberle
McCabe
Belfour
Tucker
Domi

2010 – 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
Bernier

And 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.

[monkeypunk]

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!

[monkeypunk]

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.
~bryant

I 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.

[monkeypunk]

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.
~fakepartofme

I 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.

[monkeypunk]

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.
~PrinceLH

If 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 will

Take 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.

[monkeypunk]

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.

[monkeypunk]

I don’t get this team’s powerplay.

Get people in front and just get the puck through and fight for that rebound. It’s been working. Why are they working the puck around so much more now? Pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass . . .just looking for the perfect lane that a team like Florida isn’t going to give you. Sometimes you have to make a lane. Make it happen.

[Author]

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