OT: Leafs/NHL Thread

[fbalmeida]

Found solace today in this tweet.

Read on Twitter

Truths have been spoken here. This provided me with all the framing I needed to face what comes next.

This has been excruciatingly painful - I can't ever recall being drawn to tears of sadness over pro-sports before - but finally I can see a way out.

[ATLTimekeeper]

In a nutshell, the main problem with this core is that they are, for now at least, a questionable fit for playoff hockey, while also (and this is the real killer) taking up all that cap space, making the GM's job in offsetting their on-ice stylistic shortcomings all the more difficult.

Dubas' reluctance in parting ways with one of the big-4, earlier, has arguably compounded the problem. Particularly now that Tavares' has lost a step.

Dubas fired the HOF coach because he was mean to Marner. Tavares lost a step, but he didn't turn on Babcock when that was going south. He's got impeccable character (and negative trade value, sadly). They can choose one of Marner/Matthews/Nylander to sacrifice to the playoff gods. There's nothing inherently wrong with any of them, but the cap will have the last word.

[JB7]

Top post on the Leafs subreddit yesterday, lol: https://www.reddit.com/r/leafs/comments/13ctua7/leafs_fans_on_reddit_are_weird/

This is why this team will never win. Leafs fans are simply content with mediocrity. It makes it easy on the players and management. You don't need to aim very high. A first round series win is like a championship to our fans.

Toronto sports fans in general have a loser's mentality. If you visit the Jays/Raptors subreddits during bad seasons/meltdowns, everyone is positive (this place is an exception, we're a lot more invested in the team than the casual fans on Reddit). Contrast that with New York, Boston, or Philly subreddits where even though their teams have enjoyed infinitely more success than ours, their fans are up in arms at the first signs of struggle from their teams.

A great follow-up post in that reddit chain was:

I'm trying to find all the other franchises with the best goal scorer in the league and the best defensive winger who can also score 100 points (but hasn't yet), who have consistently, over 6+ seasons, failed to perform at their best when their team has needed it the most, but for some reason Google isn't cooperating.

I did find one team that got embarrassed in the playoffs and traded their top scorer, 115pts, and now find themselves on the verge of sweeping a heavily favoured team in the 2nd round.

[JB7]

Found solace today in this tweet.

Read on Twitter

Truths have been spoken here. This provided me with all the framing I needed to face what comes next.

This has been excruciatingly painful - I can't ever recall being drawn to tears of sadness over pro-sports before - but finally I can see a way out.

[Rumi]

I've been in Canada for 20 years and a Leafs fan for all of it. I've suffered more than a decade of straight up garbage management decisions and incompetent leadership. Then came the core 4 and the Leafs have been one of the better regular season teams in the league, but no playoff success.

I've been angry every single year. I may also be open to change but I'd like to point out a few things here just to play devil's advocate:

Brandon Shanahan was 28 when we won his first Cup. He ended up winning 3.

Steve Yzerman is considered one of the best playoff performers of all time but his Red Wings repeatedly choked in the playoffs until finally at age 32 he won his first. Ended up winning 3.

I think this city is being a little rididulous to give up on a core where the 2 main guys are 25 and 26 years old.

Not too many teams in a Cup when their core is in their early 20s. It happens, but its rare.

I would make moves but I would not move Matthews, Marner and even Nylander. I believe in them and believe they are going through growing pains. We need to fix why we lose and if you look at this series, it's been crucial mistakes, predominantly from our Defense that have led to breakaways that ended up in our net. We are also overall a slower team than Florida and their forecheck has killed us. Those are two areas we need to vastly improve.

I'm willing to do a coaching change, a change in Management so we can target better players to compliment the top 3 players, but I'm not willing to give these guys up yet. They're too talented and too good to give up.

[billy_hoyle]

It's frustrating because the Leafs core was built through tanking. Same thing the 76ers are going through. The pain comes from the promise of greatness that you paid for by watching terrible hockey. Great players win titles, so it could just be about waiting it out. But, there's a hard cap, very few draft picks left for the next 3 seasons, and some players have negative trade value (Tavares) and they probably need to shake up some key components. Fans should be frustrated. They tanked, killed their cap, and then gave up their future for round 2. The Seattle Kraken are doing better in the 2nd round in their second season as an NHL team. Hammer better come down.

I think this is very illustrative of how to actually win in the NHL. Depth.

Both the Golden Knights and Kraken have been better than any Leafs team in 2 decades almost immediately.

The hope for the Leafs was that they would win while the youngsters were on their ELCs (like Chicago with Kane and Toews). Dubas gave them all massive contracts at their first opportunity (at RFA), effectively neutering our cap, and undermining our depth.

Our lack of success is very much his fault. His hard cap gymnastics is a problem of his own making.

He should be trading his stars for depth and picks. Reset.
It would be better to have a team full of physical 2nd line talent, and top 4 D than the soft high end talent, and physical 3rd/4th/bottom pairing D that we have.

I think this particular iteration is actually a pretty good team (With ROR, Acciari, McCabe etc). If he can keep this team together for another try, I probably give it another year.

[ATLTimekeeper]

I've been in Canada for 20 years and a Leafs fan for all of it. I've suffered more than a decade of straight up garbage management decisions and incompetent leadership. Then came the core 4 and the Leafs have been one of the better regular season teams in the league, but no playoff success.

I've been angry every single year. I may also be open to change but I'd like to point out a few things here just to play devil's advocate:

Brandon Shanahan was 28 when we won his first Cup. He ended up winning 3.

Steve Yzerman is considered one of the best playoff performers of all time but his Red Wings repeatedly choked in the playoffs until finally at age 32 he won his first. Ended up winning 3.

I think this city is being a little rididulous to give up on a core where the 2 main guys are 25 and 26 years old.

Not too many teams in a Cup when their core is in their early 20s. It happens, but its rare.

I would make moves but I would not move Matthews, Marner and even Nylander. I believe in them and believe they are going through growing pains. We need to fix why we lose and if you look at this series, it's been crucial mistakes, predominantly from our Defense that have led to breakaways that ended up in our net. We are also overall a slower team than Florida and their forecheck has killed us. Those are two areas we need to vastly improve.

I'm willing to do a coaching change, a change in Management so we can target better players to compliment the top 3 players, but I'm not willing to give these guys up yet. They're too talented and too good to give up.

It's not that they can't win, but there's a hard cap. Not the same world that Yzerman/Shanahan played in. Next year Matthews/Nylander are UFA, Marner is UFA the year after that. Pick one and move on.

On the radio today they were correctly identifying that NHL teams all pretty much believe in the same way to build teams, every team in the playoffs are built around a skill core. The ones that seem to thrive have extra gears/do things they don't like doing. Marner and Matthews are tight with Matthew Tkatchuk and he went out and targeted the head of Matthew Kneis. No response for that. Meanwhile Luke Schenn is beating on his best friends. Ugh. We were proud of the Sundin led Leafs, even though they were always less talented. It's harder rooting for a favourite that wilts.

[JB7]

I've been in Canada for 20 years and a Leafs fan for all of it. I've suffered more than a decade of straight up garbage management decisions and incompetent leadership. Then came the core 4 and the Leafs have been one of the better regular season teams in the league, but no playoff success.

I've been angry every single year. I may also be open to change but I'd like to point out a few things here just to play devil's advocate:

Brandon Shanahan was 28 when we won his first Cup. He ended up winning 3.

Steve Yzerman is considered one of the best playoff performers of all time but his Red Wings repeatedly choked in the playoffs until finally at age 32 he won his first. Ended up winning 3.

I think this city is being a little rididulous to give up on a core where the 2 main guys are 25 and 26 years old.

Not too many teams in a Cup when their core is in their early 20s. It happens, but its rare.

I would make moves but I would not move Matthews, Marner and even Nylander. I believe in them and believe they are going through growing pains. We need to fix why we lose and if you look at this series, it's been crucial mistakes, predominantly from our Defense that have led to breakaways that ended up in our net. We are also overall a slower team than Florida and their forecheck has killed us. Those are two areas we need to vastly improve.

I'm willing to do a coaching change, a change in Management so we can target better players to compliment the top 3 players, but I'm not willing to give these guys up yet. They're too talented and too good to give up.

It's not that they can't win, but there's a hard cap. Not the same world that Yzerman/Shanahan played in. Next year Matthews/Nylander are UFA, Marner is UFA the year after that. Pick one and move on.

Exactly - it was a much different world when the Red Wings were dominant. They were only limited on what they could spend based on their owners purse strings.

Now in the world of a cap, the more resources tied up in a few players, the less can be done on the rest of the roster. Edmonton is running into the same problem as well.

[ItsDanger]

I don't think its a great comparison to the Red Wings. Sergei Fedorov was a far more complete player than anyone on the Leafs and he was the 2nd line centre. Scotty Bowman was the coach wasn't he? And as already noted, Leafs are operating under a hard cap.

[fbalmeida]

Top post on the Leafs subreddit yesterday, lol: https://www.reddit.com/r/leafs/comments/13ctua7/leafs_fans_on_reddit_are_weird/

This is why this team will never win. Leafs fans are simply content with mediocrity. It makes it easy on the players and management. You don't need to aim very high. A first round series win is like a championship to our fans.

Toronto sports fans in general have a loser's mentality. If you visit the Jays/Raptors subreddits during bad seasons/meltdowns, everyone is positive (this place is an exception, we're a lot more invested in the team than the casual fans on Reddit). Contrast that with New York, Boston, or Philly subreddits where even though their teams have enjoyed infinitely more success than ours, their fans are up in arms at the first signs of struggle from their teams.

A great follow-up post in that reddit chain was:

I'm trying to find all the other franchises with the best goal scorer in the league and the best defensive winger who can also score 100 points (but hasn't yet), who have consistently, over 6+ seasons, failed to perform at their best when their team has needed it the most, but for some reason Google isn't cooperating.

I did find one team that got embarrassed in the playoffs and traded their top scorer, 115pts, and now find themselves on the verge of sweeping a heavily favoured team in the 2nd round.

That Reddit guy who thinks Leafs fans are content with mediocrity is just being ridiculous. That is simply nowhere near any point at all. Where was this person when the crowd itself essentially sent both Burke and Ron Wilson packing out of sheer intolerance for mediocrity?

Watch on YouTube

[rocky_da_best]

I share the disappointment. I was on here in the Tampa series when they were up saying Dubas needs 2 rounds to save his job. Standards need to be higher.

Troubling sign #1, a guy with 3 games NHL experience was relied on to provide offense on a team with Stanley Cup intentions.
Troubling sign #2, Matthews/Marner close friend Tkatchuk takes aim at that rookie's head. No response. Sam Bennett "finishes the job." No response. Next game, no response. Luke Schenn with like two weeks experience as a Leaf on this team is out there punching all his best friends on the Lightening. Bennett continues to run at Leafs in game 3. No response. Leadership needs a shake-up.

Doesnt help when our best players are more interested in dipsey doodling around guys in their own zone instead of making the right hockey play and getting the puck down the ice. Wish Don Cherry was still on TV so I could hear him rip into this team.

I think this team might have killed him, if he was still on air having to watch and comment on them.

We don't nearly have enough Europeans for that to have happened, although I'm sure he'd have a thing or two to say about Nylander and how his play has probably infiltrated the minds of good ol' Canadian kids like Mitchy Marner. I'm sure his way of solving the issue would be to play Simmonds 25 minutes a night Would be entertaining though lol

[C_Money]

Found solace today in this tweet.

Read on Twitter

Truths have been spoken here. This provided me with all the framing I needed to face what comes next.

This has been excruciatingly painful - I can't ever recall being drawn to tears of sadness over pro-sports before - but finally I can see a way out.

Lol that was a good article. I’m not a Leaves fan but I can imagine the pain.

[fbalmeida]

Hope...

Watch on YouTube

...is the thing with feathers, you see... that perches in the soul.

Come on Leafs.

[mdenny]

Found solace today in this tweet.

Read on Twitter

Truths have been spoken here. This provided me with all the framing I needed to face what comes next.

This has been excruciatingly painful - I can't ever recall being drawn to tears of sadness over pro-sports before - but finally I can see a way out.

Lol that was a good article. I’m not a Leaves fan but I can imagine the pain.

The Gilmore team was the best version and probably should've won a cup.

But yah. All through the 70s/80s it was brutal. Had around 10 years of Gilmore and then Sundin teams that were decent. Then brutal again all through the late 00s/10s and now 20s.

We've been spoiled by the past 10 years of Raptors. People have meltdowns just because we have a 500 team.

[WuTang_CMB]

they booked 18 at the national for tomorrow

[KL78192020]

Mathews is gona be a free agent next summer, Marner and Tavares the summer after. They gotta make some decisions on a direction. Crazy this core hasn't done anything.

[Brinbe]

lol matthews already looks mentally defeated holy crap

that body language is AWFUL

[Tha Cynic]

4 straight wins, let's go!

[Tha Cynic]

The Leafs are so slow lol.

[HangTime]

To the Leafs fans, does this series give you the same feeling of the Raptors/Wizards sweep series?