JB7 wrote:The moment the Leafs drafted Matthews, the clock started ticking. He is a US born star, drafted 1st overall, and was projected to be a superstar player, like a McDavid, Crosby, Ovie. The league is 2/3rds US teams. US teams, no matter what the sport, love having US stars. So finally a big time US born star in hockey comes along, it seems like it is only a matter of time before he leaves for the bigger US market.
Why is it when a Canadian team drafts a top US player its automatically assumed that he'll eventually want to go back to the US to play and the reverse isn't true? I can understand why free agents aren't as likely to want to choose Canada to go play at, but I don't know why even Canadian drafted and developed US players would all feel the same as well. I mean sure its happened a number of times, but its still not guaranteed that EVERY US player wants to return home to play though.
If this is truly the case then I guess we know a big part of the reason why Canadian teams have such a hard time winning the cup when not only free agents don't want to sign with Canadian teams, but also their own talent doesn't want to either.
With regards to Matthews specifically, I think most likely he chooses to stay as long as the price is right. What's better than playing with your best friend Marner, on a top team, being one of the highest paid players in the league, in a market that cares so much about the Leafs and hockey and where if you win you will become an instant legend to all Leafs fans everywhere? Maybe some players don't like that massive spotlight that every Canadian team has on them, but why play in a market that cares much less and will barely turn out even if you ever win a championship?
Even in the unlikely chance that Matthews does want to leave I use to dread the thought of that, but now I wouldn't be nearly as devastated considering his play in recent years. He's still a great player, but who knows if injures haven't slowed him down abit so that this year he doesn't look nearly as awesome compared to say his first couple of years in the NHL where even though he put up less points, he looked so much more dominate and impactful on the ice and seemed to have all the energy in the world.
If Matthews leaves because he wants to go or asks for too much money, as long as they can trade him and get a good package back I'd be alright in losing him.
Liljegren and Holl, while decent at moving the puck, are not better than Rielly, Brodie and McCabe at doing it, and none of those players would be considered bruisers. The back end needs some bruisers to wear down the opposition. Playoffs are a grind because of these style of players who are there to wear down the opposition over the course of a series. That's why a Schenn and Gio get time over Liljegren and Holl. Plus Schenn and Gio are probably trusted more to take the hit to make a play.
Liljegren is definitely a pretty good/very good passer and if you were watching Leafs games regularly you would see it and there's NO WAY either of Brodie or McCabe are better than he is as a puck mover. There's a reason why Holl and Gio were often a tire fire when they were together and yet Liljegren and Gio were much better and steady because Liljegren can move the puck and make good passes. Also he's a good skater and is still developing his offensive game after being put on the backburner offensively in favor of Sandin.
As for toughness that's what both Schenn and McCabe have brought significantly to the backend. Both guys can hit and perhaps more importantly they're big bodies that can help move people and grind in the corners. With Dmen you need a good mix and I think the Leafs have a decent mix right now with skill and toughness. Also while Schenn was in the bottom pairing for Tampa he's developed into a decent Dman that can move up and play more minutes without hurting you, so great for Tampa that they were so deep on defense, but that doesn't mean Schenn isn't capable of doing more than what he was given while playing with the Lightning.
Winning in the playoffs is about D. This is exactly the problem with the Leafs. They are built almost primarily with a focus on offence and puck control, over D. The Leafs had and have nothing in their system like Guhle and Schneider. The moment they had the opportunity to draft that type of talent on the back end, they should have immediately taken it. When they chose Amirov (as a representation of their focus completely on offensive players) over Guhle and Schneider, I knew immediately the Leafs under Dubas would never change, and would never make it near a Cup final. Funny that it was the Canadians (a team that knows success) drafted Guhle immediately after the Amirov pick. In terms of offence for the playoffs, all the team really needs is a great powerplay. Why I would keep players like Rielly, Nylander and Tavares. The most opportunities they'll get to score will come on the powerplay. The rest of the goals scored in the playoffs are usually grinder goals, or goals converted off of mistakes.
Winning in the playoffs is about everything. Having a hot goalie is definitely number one in getting a team far in the playoffs, but both good defense and offense is pretty much equally important where you can't win if you don't score and you also can't win if you can't stop the other team from scoring. Looking at the Leafs playoffs this season they're suffering more from not being able to score than keeping the puck out of their own net when outside of the two blowout games against the Lightning, 6 out of the other 8 games they've played were one goal wins and losses.
Sure keeping goals out is very important, but so is scoring them and the Leafs had a very hard time generating quality scoring chances against Tampa, but they capitalized on the chances that they got. With the Panthers they've gotten many more good chances to score, but conversely haven't buried those chances and as a result are down in the series. They could easily be up 3-1 rather down down 3-1 if they could've scored on even a fraction of the prime scoring chances that they got.
Crosby (4 years in the league) and Malkin (3 years in the league) won a Cup. Those are the types of players Matthews is being compared to, in terms of potential. So him being able to lead the Leafs at least to a conference finals after 5 years in the league (especially the COVID playoffs where they were almost guaranteed a conference finals) is not crazy to think.
Matthews is a great player, but I don't think he should be compared to Malkin let alone Crosby who are a level or two above him in their primes. Perhaps if he gets better then maybe he can be compared to them. We can only hope that Matthews can end up with a Malkin kind of career let alone a Crosby kind of career.
I agree. Tavares is not overpaid in the sense it is what he commanded. If anything, I think San Jose would have paid him more in his FA, and he took less to come home. But, if 50% of your salary cap is taken up by 4 players on your roster, it will be hard to build a team around that, especially when all 4 players are forwards. If that four covered your goaltender and top D (that was championship level), with two forwards (preferably C's) then that is a different story.
That's the chance you take with signing a star level free agent. It may or may not payoff just like with any other player. As I said the Leafs were pursuing Stamkos when he was going to free agency before they then targeted Tavares so its clear they wanted to sign a star free agent and didn't mind paying for it. Sure in retrospect it was probably better not to sign him, but at the time few people thought it was a bad idea to get him and have that one, two punch of Matthews and Tavares down the middle.
Connor, as the best player in the world, is only making $12.5M on an 8 year extension. Draisaitl is only making $8.5M, also on an 8 year extension. Both are C's. They are exactly what you want to build with. Problem for Edmonton is location. They need to overpay FAs to get them to come, which wastes cap room, and they have not drafted and developed well around those two.
That's EXACTLY what the Leafs were doing with Matthews and Tavares and yet you criticise them for trying to build with 2 strong centers down the middle. Sure Matthews didn't sign the full 8 years and Drai is vastly better and cheaper than Tavares, but that was the plan that Dubas also had where two star centers would be leading the team. Matthews and Tavares aren't nearly as good as McDavid and Drai, but they're still pretty damn good.
MacKinnon was on a very cheap deal, and hugely productive. Perfect player to build around then. Now with his extension, a different story. Still a great player, but he'll be 28 in the first year of an 8 year extension at $12.6M. They probably have a two year window until things really go off the rails for them. Losing Kadri in FA and Landeskog to injury was already a big hit to them this year. In two years their goaltender and Rantanen are FAs.
As long as MacKinnon can stay healthy I don't think his play will drop off significantly because he's a superstar level player. I think its more likely that he'll have a Crosby type career where he'll still play great well into his 30s than falling off a cliff like Brad Richards did after signing his big deal with the Rangers back in the day. The Avs were hit hard with injuries this year and even then they made it into the playoffs pretty easily. Outside of Rantanen most of their other good players are already signed to longer term deals so I think they'll just pay for Rantanen and stay being a top team for years to come.
Have you ever played the game? The players that influence the game the most are: goaltenders (play the whole game), top D (can play up to half the game and can control the flow of the game), and top C (play a third of the game, and are responsible to control the play in all zones). No matter how great wingers are, their influence is limited. So if a team has limited cap space to spend, to win you typically want to invest it in those key areas. Now, that doesn't mean overpaying a middle of the pack goaltender or D as a top option (if you could not acquire a top G or D), then yes, putting your money into a top level winger may make more sense.
I disagree. You make it sound like a winger is forced to stay only on his side of the ice rather than going everywhere like any other player does. Marner influences and controls the game FAR MORE than Matthews does when he's on the ice. These days a winger or center is mostly a label except for a couple of differences where if you're good in the faceoff circle and can play decent defense then you can play center.
Also while goalies influence a game the most, they're also the most unpredicable which is why any team that pays out big money for their goalie even if they're young is always taking a huge gamble. One year they can play lights out then another year fall off a cliff and then come back the next year and play great again. Or they can be like Bob and suck for most of the regular season and then start playing well in the playoffs.
I don't understand this point. It is exactly what I was saying. Toronto cannot attract the same level of talent as LA, and therefore needs to be more creative and bold in trying to acquire the talent to win, which Masai did.
Or are you just saying if we start referring to our city as LA, maybe we could confuse some stars and get them to sign
Make sure they only come to see the city in the summer
I'm saying Toronto or most every other Canadian city has a tougher time attracting good players because they're in Canada, often have higher taxes and also the weather sucks for many cities here. That's why I said if you moved LA to Toronto's location and Toronto to LA's location that LA would suddenly have trouble attracting good players because of location/taxes/weather and not because of the city itself. And 'being creative and bold' often means paying more for a player and/or trading for a good player and hoping they like it enough to stay.
