Leafs Regular Season Discussion

[J Dilla]

Im concerned about Gustavsson. They should bring up Mark in the Park.

[s e n s i]

awful game. not to make excuses, but it was kind of a perfect storm for the leafs to not only lose their first game in regulation, but get blown out. 2nd game of a back to back against a boston team that got housed in their last game against the canes, you knew they would go hard. plus gustavsson needed a start.

i think we would've lost regardless of who was between the goal posts last night, but the skaters just didn't and never do seem to have the same confidence when gustavsson is in net as opposed to reimer. i'm thinking these dudes score on gustavsson at will in practice.

grabovski needs to pull his head outta his ass. this team cannot afford for this guy to have yet another listless start to the season. hanging on to the puck too long, trying to make fancy passes, going 1-on-3 too often, it's irritating watching this guy play sometimes. where the hell is schenn too?

the PP is something else though. i don't even want to get into it...it's just awful and the season will hit the sh*ts again if the PP continues to suck.

[ATLTimekeeper]

grabovski needs to pull his head outta his ass. this team cannot afford for this guy to have yet another listless start to the season. hanging on to the puck too long, trying to make fancy passes, going 1-on-3 too often, it's irritating watching this guy play sometimes. where the hell is schenn too?

I thought those were two of our better players last night. Grabovski was a constant threat. Even scored.

[Crowned]

Im concerned about Gustavsson. They should bring up Mark in the Park.

He'd be the third goaltender to come up, and there's absolutely no way he'll step foot in the NHL this year. Burke would go out and acquire another goaltender before bringing him up.

[5DOM]

That was some goal to win it

[SharoneWright]

None of those goals on Gus tonight were stoppable.....

Grabo with a beauty to win it! The only guy on our team capable of that one!

[Crowned]

The first and 3rd were difficult, the 2nd was rather weak. I've heard that Reimer's injury isn't too concerning, and I certainly hope that's true. We can't trot Gustavsson out there as a starter until he get's some confidence back.

Gardiner was real impressive. I'm glad he's getting playing time, and logging some minutes. He's such a fluid, smooth skater. What a steal by Burke in that Beauchemin trade. Getting Gardiner is looking better each day, and the supposed 'salary dump' in Lupul isn't too shabby either. He's been pretty solid next to Kessel so far.

[YogiStewart]

still be warned that you may have fool's gold (yes, the voice of Toronto hockey pessimism).
Leafs have a REALLY light sched to start the season. only good team they've faced is Boston, and we all know how that one panned out.
Duking it out with an awful Habs team and trailing a struggling Jets team isn't great.

but....but....
there are some glimmers of hope.
no one's talking about Phaneuf actually SCORING a few times this year. this is a pleasant change.

[Anatomize]

still be warned that you may have fool's gold (yes, the voice of Toronto hockey pessimism).
Leafs have a REALLY light sched to start the season. only good team they've faced is Boston, and we all know how that one panned out.
Duking it out with an awful Habs team and trailing a struggling Jets team isn't great.

but....but....
there are some glimmers of hope.
no one's talking about Phaneuf actually SCORING a few times this year. this is a pleasant change.

I think what's alarming is the fashion in which they've played in these games. They aren't really controlling the teams we've beat, the Leafs have been outplayed through many periods. Sloppy passing, and if there is nice passing it appears its being mishandled. We're getting a lot of awkward bounces, but we're capitalizing on our scoring chances and making the other team pay for turning the puck over.

Right now it just looks like we're a scrappy team which is ill-prepared and doesn't know how to control the game the way upper echelon teams do. A lot of that has to do with the fact that we have so many young players and no-existing veteran presence. I really think losing Kaberle hurt our blue line, because other than Phaneuf's slap shot and above-average puck handling for his size, I really haven't been impressed with some of the silly mistakes he makes defensively. I saw Phaneuf try some ridiculous passes backwards without looking which cost us several fast break opportunities; not to mention, he's turned the puck over in our own zone close to our goalie and it almost cost us a few goals in a few of our games now.

Usually early on the teams that succeed the most tend to be one of two:

1. Haven't been scouted well enough and are playing above their heads - while earning a few lackluster wins. Come down to earth when the schedule gets tougher.

2. Group of guys that have been together for a few years now and play their system to perfection

The Leafs need to gel better moving forward, usually it gets better as the season goes on (especially for a young team). Referring to my two examples above, we're likely in the #1 category. Don't forget, across all our Toronto sports teams we've always come out of the gate quick only to fizzle once we face real competition (this is true for the Blue Jays, Raptors, and Leafs in recent years).

[YogiStewart]

compare the Leafs' schedule to that of the Jets or Rangers - the 2 teams who have the worst starting schedule.
Leafs have played mainly at home and have a WEEK layoff after their opener!
meanwhile, the Rangers are just getting around to their home opener and, after the majority of their games being on the road, the Jets are off on a SEVEN game road trip.

it also helps that Kessel's been playing like a top 10 talent. we've seen him do this before and, sadly, he can't seem to keep it up for large stretches.
but its also a telling sign about the Leafs' lack of talent when you have David Friggen Steckel playing as the top line centre. oy.

[Anatomize]

It's probably Kessel's conditioning. His biggest question marks coming into the NHL were his attitude, ability to get along with teammates, being selfish, and having horrible work ethic. At the draft workouts and such he clocked in at the worst time on the bike and stopped after 7 minutes (Kessel said he hadn't worked out for a month and a half and that's why he gassed). Scouts said Kessel was one of the worst conditioned athletes at the workouts.

For a guy as highly touted as Kessel is, he hasn't exactly broken the 60 pt pleateau since arriving in the NHL. That has to be a cause for some concern considering the hype, and the fact we gave up some great draft picks to get him. He's still young, so there is still hope for him to be a great point scorer, but it really wouldn't surprise me if he goes on a huge drought again.

[SharoneWright]

Gardiner was real impressive. I'm glad he's getting playing time, and logging some minutes. He's such a fluid, smooth skater. What a steal by Burke in that Beauchemin trade. Getting Gardiner is looking better each day, and the supposed 'salary dump' in Lupul isn't too shabby either. He's been pretty solid next to Kessel so far.

True that. Burke also got Lombardi as a 'salary dump' from Nashville. Really cool what you can accomplish when you have room under the cap.

[SharoneWright]

still be warned that you may have fool's gold (yes, the voice of Toronto hockey pessimism).
Leafs have a REALLY light sched to start the season. only good team they've faced is Boston, and we all know how that one panned out.
Duking it out with an awful Habs team and trailing a struggling Jets team isn't great.

but....but....
there are some glimmers of hope.
no one's talking about Phaneuf actually SCORING a few times this year. this is a pleasant change.

The team's +/- on the season is +1.... and we have parlayed that into a 5-1-1 start! Talk about maximizing your results. As such, you are absolutely right that we're going to have to significantly raise our game against play-off quality squads...

[s e n s i]

compare the Leafs' schedule to that of the Jets or Rangers - the 2 teams who have the worst starting schedule.
Leafs have played mainly at home and have a WEEK layoff after their opener!
meanwhile, the Rangers are just getting around to their home opener and, after the majority of their games being on the road, the Jets are off on a SEVEN game road trip.

it also helps that Kessel's been playing like a top 10 talent. we've seen him do this before and, sadly, he can't seem to keep it up for large stretches.
but its also a telling sign about the Leafs' lack of talent when you have David Friggen Steckel playing as the top line centre. oy.

the jets suck and actually are less talented imo than the leafs, so the start to their season comes as no surprise. yes it helps that the leafs have had the habs twice and the sens once to start the season, but this team has been playing well-above .500 hockey since the calendar turned over to 2011...29-16-7 to be exact...and through this 52 game stretch since jan 1st, that's 65 points...well on route to not only a playoff berth, but home-ice advantage if extrapolated to a full 82 games.

so really this hot start to this season is not an anomaly. the leafs have been playing very well for the past 52 games, a large enough sample size to confidently say that this team can make the playoffs.

also, steckel has been a monster in the faceoff circle and i'm not trying to fondle burkie's balls here but that's a pretty solid acquisition, even if they prop him on the top line by default. he wins face-offs at an alarming rate, and a guy like that is invaluable when a game is hanging in the balance. steckel was on the top line on the caps a few years ago (best team in the league in reg season), so your point is moot anyway.

and going back to the scheduling, yea the 5 game homestand to open the season is definitely favorable, but they're in the middle of a brutal 5 game road trip that includes stops in boston, philly, ny, and pittsburgh...so i'd say that after 10 games the difficulty of the schedule will have balanced out.

[Bankai]

Phaneuf deal looking like a steal. Although Kessel is really looking good now, I still think it was an awful lot to give up for him.

[ATLTimekeeper]

You'd think after that first goal they might have been on the lookout for Jagr cherry picking. Special teams also killed us.

[SharoneWright]

When does Colborne get the call?

Ideal 3rd-line centre.
Lombo goes to 1.
Bozak down to 4.

jmho

[_venom_]

When does Colborne get the call?

Ideal 3rd-line centre.
Lombo goes to 1.
Bozak down to 4.

jmho

I doubt Colborne gets called up at all this season, unless its late in he year and we're out of the playoff race or we get a lot of injuries. They probably want him to have the whole year in the AHL and then be ready for the big club next season. He's playing great right now but he still has some major flaws in his game and I'd rather let him keep dominating the AHL this year.

Connollly is supposed to be back for Thursday's game against the Rangers and Bozak will most likely be back too. Does that mean Kadri gets sent down? Probably. Frattin has been better than Kadri plain and simple. If both Connolly and Bozak are back I expect the lineup to be:

Lupul/Connolly/Kessel
Kulemin/Grabovski/MacArthur
Lombardi/Bozak/Frattin
Dupuis/Steckel/Brown

IR: Armstrong
Scratch: Orr and Rosehill
Sent Down: Kadri

[_venom_]

If the Leafs don't get better on the penalty kill and powerplay they won't be sniffing the playoffs again. Wilson has now had so much time and different personnel to improve the special teams and I have still not seen any improvement. As far as I'm concerned the PP and PK is more about system rather than actual talent. There have been great powerplay and penalty killing teams with less talent than we have. It needs to get better, a lot better.

[Bankai]

I know I have been critical of Jonas but he did awesome last night and came up big. But the defense broke down at bad times and led to easy chances, Jagr and Simmons was cutting through it all.