2017-18 Toronto Maple Leafs - General Discussion

[Kin]

NFL Players can't terminate their own contracts, can they?  The team is able to release them though, right?  I get that it would be a gong show if the players could terminate their own contracts, but that seems fairly one sided.

Yes. As lopsided as the NHL CBA is it's still not quite as bad for the players as the NFL's CBA is for theirs.

 

[Frank E]

I remember the guaranteed contracts thing was a point of discussion last round of CBA negotiations.

I think the owners are going after that next time 'round.

 

[Kin]

I remember the guaranteed contracts thing was a point of discussion last round of CBA negotiations.

I think the owners are going after that next time 'round.

If so, I think that's the one thing that could lead to another cancelled season. I think to get there you're going to have to really break the union the way you did in 04-05.

 

[Frank E]

I remember the guaranteed contracts thing was a point of discussion last round of CBA negotiations.

I think the owners are going after that next time 'round.

If so, I think that's the one thing that could lead to another cancelled season. I think to get there you're going to have to really break the union the way you did in 04-05.

Yeah, I think that guaranteed contracts is the one thing that all players will agree is a no-go.

I think because a small decrease in gross revenues % really didn't matter much to 75% of the players who would net-lose more by a cancelled season than by conceding some % points, that gets done...but taking away their guarantee would be a pretty scary scenario, and more so for the lower income earners.

 

[rdowdall]

NFL Players can't terminate their own contracts, can they?  The team is able to release them though, right?  I get that it would be a gong show if the players could terminate their own contracts, but that seems fairly one sided.

Yes. As lopsided as the NHL CBA is it's still not quite as bad for the players as the NFL's CBA is for theirs.

I'm surprised the players haven't tried to got to court to argue that.  Could a player work in to their contract that they could null and void their contract if they choose too?  NFL doesn't have option years, because of the cap, correct?

 

[Bill_Berg]

NFL players get guaranteed money, so if a team cuts them, they still get part of the money. Not that that makes it good for the players, but it's something to note.

 

[pnjunction]

I'm surprised the players haven't tried to got to court to argue that.  Could a player work in to their contract that they could null and void their contract if they choose too?  NFL doesn't have option years, because of the cap, correct?

The cap is an issue here too, with the AAV of the contract and front-loading.  The only way it could really work is if there was absolutely no front-loading, and I think the league would still want more in return (ie. if players get an out then teams might want an out...).  It's all give and take, it would seem that NHLPA value 100% guaranteed money and front-loading more than things they could get if they gave those up.

 

[Kin]

I'm surprised the players haven't tried to got to court to argue that.

Argue what? It's a lousy CBA for them but nobody put a gun to their head and made them agree to it.

Could a player work in to their contract that they could null and void their contract if they choose too?  NFL doesn't have option years, because of the cap, correct?

The thing to keep in mind is that NFL contracts can essentially be whatever a team wants them to be. So there's no real reason to have option years. A player option would be meaningless when they can be released at any time and because they can be released at any time every contract is more or less nothing but team option years.

As Bill Berg said each NFL contract is different in that it will have a different % of the total value of the contract guaranteed. The idea that having contracts fully guaranteed is some sort of great win for the NHLPA doesn't really hold up because by all accounts it's the league, not the players that seemed really opposed to option years, performance bonuses and really just any of the flexibility you could have in coming up with different contracts. The inability for the Kings to offer Anze Kopitar, say, a 8 year/80 million dollar deal but with two years being mutual option years or 20 million coming in the form of performance bonuses was at the league's insistence of cost certainty.

All I've ever argued what should happen in sports leagues is that players and teams should have fairly wide latitude to negotiate whatever contract the two sides can agree on. So if the player doesn't have the leverage to negotiate a fully guaranteed contract, I'm ok with that. Conversely, if a player has the leverage to negotiate a 15 year/100 million dollar per year fully guaranteed deal, again, I don't think the league should step in. It should be the responsibility of the teams themselves to, golly, not sign bad contracts of their own volition.

 

[rdowdall]

Argue what? It's a lousy CBA for them but nobody put a gun to their head and made them agree to it.

I get that it's in their CBA.  I just think that at some point that someone would argue that it's an unfair business practice that the employer holds all the cards.  Sure nobody holds a gun to their head to sign the contract with a team, but nobody held a gun to my head when I went to work for a particular company.  If I didn't like it there I could have left.  However, if a player signs a contract thinking they are getting to a situation that is going to work for them, and it turns out to be absolutely horrible, they have no way of getting out of that situation except to request a release or a trade, but those requests don't need to be fulfilled.

All I've ever argued what should happen in sports leagues is that players and teams should have fairly wide latitude to negotiate whatever contract the two sides can agree on. So if the player doesn't have the leverage to negotiate a fully guaranteed contract, I'm ok with that. Conversely, if a player has the leverage to negotiate a 15 year/100 million dollar per year fully guaranteed deal, again, I don't think the league should step in. It should be the responsibility of the teams themselves to, golly, not sign bad contracts of their own volition.

Which would be closer to how things work in other industries.  You build up a reputation, and then based on past performance, you can start to use that past performance in a negotiation for a new contract.  I agree with you, I think the current model in sports really favors the owners.  I think the fact that the really good players make a lot of money sort of covers up the problems that occur with the lower end players and twist the public perception away from just how one sided it is.

 

[Highlander]

Time to sign Shapalova to LW, he has a wicked shot, hope he can skate
Happy Labour Day to all

 

[Kin]

I get that it's in their CBA.  I just think that at some point that someone would argue that it's an unfair business practice that the employer holds all the cards.

But my point is that even if the courts in the US were inclined to favour labour over management, and after 40 years of being governed by people who think the stock market is a good measure of the economy they shockingly aren't, I still think it's a valid counter-argument to say that whatever problems exist in the current system should be addressed via CBA negotiations as opposed to a court case. Because even as slanted a system as it is, if the players agree to it it doesn't then seem right to turn around and sue on the basis of something you agreed to.

Because the PA, who remember would be the ones in court actually doing the suing, would either have to answer why they agreed or why they're suing now. Alternately a player could sue individually but if he really thinks it's an unfair system his primary complaint should be against the PA for agreeing to such a crummy CBA.

  Sure nobody holds a gun to their head to sign the contract with a team, but nobody held a gun to my head when I went to work for a particular company.  If I didn't like it there I could have left.  However, if a player signs a contract thinking they are getting to a situation that is going to work for them, and it turns out to be absolutely horrible, they have no way of getting out of that situation except to request a release or a trade, but those requests don't need to be fulfilled.

So I think there's a little bit of a misconception here. NFL players can negotiate fairly open ended contracts. That is to say, there aren't a ton of guidelines on what contracts have to be. Look at the deal just signed by Lions QB Matthew Stafford:

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2017/08/29/the-full-matthew-stafford-contract-details/

So it's a six year deal and while it's been reported as a 151 million dollar deal, it's really a 6 year/60 million dollar deal with some injury protection. In reality it probably figures to be a three year/90 million dollar deal before it gets renegotiated.

But the point remains, a good NFL football player can go out and sign a six year deal that guarantees he'll get paid 60 million dollars. It will just be reported as a 6 year/100 milllion dollar deal because it will have 40 million dollars in non-guaranteed money that a player is unlikely(or sometimes even designed not to) ever collect. But still, six years and 60 million. Sure that NFL player can be released at any time but they're still making that 60 million.

I think that's what confuses some hockey fans when they talk about guaranteed and non-guaranteed deals. Some hockey fans think that if the league went to a system of non-guaranteed deals that 0% of money would be guaranteed on NHL contracts and that, for instance, in that world a Clarkson-like situation could be walked away from without having to pay him anything. But even in the NFL there is guaranteed money and teams that walk away from contracts still have cap ramifications for doing so.

(It should be pointed out that the NFL cap is obscenely complicated)

So in the NHL's future a David Clarkson situation might result in him signing a different sort of deal, say, 35 million over 7 years but with only half of it guaranteed and so the Leafs could walk away but they'd still have 2.5 million ish on their cap every year of the deal. The idea of having teams just being able to walk away from any contract at any time and have no cap or financial obligations, which some NHL fans actually argue for, doesn't really exist in sports.

The real problem with the NFL isn't so much that deals "aren't guaranteed" because like I said players can negotiate to guaranteed as much money as their leverage dictates. The issue in the NFL is that they've so artificially restricted player's leverage that just about any player in the league who isn't a star quarterback makes less than just about any half-way decent NBA player, despite the NFL being a much more profitable league for the owners.

So to your point, I don't entirely know what you mean by a player being signed to a deal that turns out horribly and who wants to get out of it. But a player unhappy in his situation can always leave the NFL if they want(and, more and more, young NFL players are leaving the league in their prime). Because the argument some people buy is that the NFL is a single employer effectively and they get to decide, like most employers, where their employees work. If I work at Google, and I'm unhappy working for them in Toronto, I can't just demand they assign me to their London office or even negotiate separately with their London office. I can, however, quit Google and go work for a different company. Same idea applies. A Linebacker unhappy with his NFL situation could leave the NFL and go work for someone else.

Now, I don't agree with the above. I think the idea of the NFL or NHL or NBA as a single employer only flies because they have some anti-trust protection because, you know, the New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys are pretty clearly competitors and not local branch offices but until you get real progressive reform in the American Judicial system and labour law, well, unfortunately there will continue to be an exploited proletariat. Viva la Revolution.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

https://twitter.com/mirtle/status/905758878444466178

Sounds like Jack Han has been hired by the Leafs in some sort of analytics role. Han's been a writer for the Athletic all year long and has written a number of Leafs-centric articles in that time. His speciality is using video to break down tactics and strategies. You can find them all here: https://theathletic.com/author/6474/

Prior to the Athletic he kind of rose to fame on twitter for his One Minute Tactics video series where he broke down different types of tactics and strategies quickly. You can find them all by scrolling through this twitter search: https://twitter.com/search?l=&q=%231MinuteTactics%20from%3Aml_han&src=typd

Here's a few old Leafs related ones:

https://twitter.com/ml_han/status/874814615896682496
https://twitter.com/ml_han/status/853616358793367553
https://twitter.com/ml_han/status/823372674613280769

 

[CarltonTheBear]

Also here's a profile of him written by Bob McKenzie last December: http://www.tsn.ca/han-hopes-to-challenge-conventional-thinking-in-coaching-ranks-1.623971

Jack Han can tell you the precise moment he decided he wanted to be a professional hockey coach.

A wise guy might suggest that since Han is now all of 27 years old, it shouldn't be too difficult for him to remember that, or anything else about his young life, but we digress.

It was three years ago, during the 2013-14 season, and the McGill University marketing major grad was in his first few months of a one-year contract with the Montreal Canadiens. Han had been hired to provide web content for canadiens.com, to be the team-hired beat reporter who not only covered each game and practice, but also travelled with the Habs on the team charter.

As an aficionado of advanced statistics, or hockey analytics ? someone who mostly trusts facts over feelings ? Han was always looking for ways to include tactical and statistical concepts in his game stories.

One day, his boss pulled him aside.

?He was very nice about it,? Han recalled of the conversation, ?but he asked me, ?What makes you qualified to offer an opinion [on how the game should be played]?? He was absolutely right. I thought, ?I'm not a coach but maybe I should be.? It lit the fuse.?

 

[herman]

I wonder if this was the hire that Dimitri Filopovic (I think) hinted at a couple of months ago on The Hockey PDOCast about a friend who was hired by a team for an analytics position but it still hadn't been announced.

https://twitter.com/ml_han/status/905572065343885312
www.twitter.com/ml_han/status/905572065343885312

I wondered about this.

I also hope he accidentally forgets about his blog and some stuff stays up:
https://jackhanhockey.com/portfolio/toronto-maple-leafs/

 

[WhatIfGodWasALeaf]

Happy for him, but I'll miss his work.

I wonder who will fill the void he has left in hockey Twitter.

 

[herman]

https://www.pensionplanpuppets.com/2017/9/7/16253088/toronto-maple-leafs-forward-lines-leo-komarov-james-van-riemsdyk-patrick-marleau-dealine-trade

This does not get talked about enough:

Forward lineups are not a report card. They aren't a marker of status. You can't deal out players from a list of who is best down to who isn't and produce a perfect lineup. That's how you get people suggesting van Riemsdyk should play with Matthews and Nylander.

I'm not sure if it was ever conclusively determined if they'd need three pucks or just two to make that work, but the charts contained in that very story show you that van Riemsdyk is one of the highest volume shooters on the Leafs. Hooking him up with the pass-first Bozak and the pass-often Marner makes more sense than having him fight Auston "no, I'll score that myself, thanks" Matthews and William "I love having the puck" Nylander for some time with the rubber.

And that's exactly why Marleau might not work out with Matthews. He has a very similar offensive style to van Riemsdyk, and he shoots from very tight to the net like Matthews does. He does not shoot at quite the high rate of JvR, but it's close. Marleau has also spent a lot of years playing with the grand champion of pass-first centres in Joe Thornton.

Marleau - Matthews - Marner
Leivo - Kadri - Kapanen
Johnsson - Nylander - Brown
Rychel - Moore - Hyman
Soshnikov

 

[Kin]

I think it's generally true that, when constructing lines, you want to care about fit and matching styles of play as much as it's just a grouping of talent. That said, I also think talented hockey players can adjust their style of play depending on who they're playing with.

 

[herman]

https://twitter.com/LeafsPR/status/905852908994011137
www.twitter.com/LeafsPR/status/905852908994011137

 

[riff raff]

https://twitter.com/LeafsPR/status/905852908994011137
www.twitter.com/LeafsPR/status/905852908994011137

"Return from Robidas Island"

(Does it now become Lupul Island?)

 

[princedpw]

https://www.pensionplanpuppets.com/2017/9/7/16253088/toronto-maple-leafs-forward-lines-leo-komarov-james-van-riemsdyk-patrick-marleau-dealine-trade

This does not get talked about enough:

Forward lineups are not a report card. They aren't a marker of status. You can't deal out players from a list of who is best down to who isn't and produce a perfect lineup. That's how you get people suggesting van Riemsdyk should play with Matthews and Nylander.

I'm not sure if it was ever conclusively determined if they'd need three pucks or just two to make that work, but the charts contained in that very story show you that van Riemsdyk is one of the highest volume shooters on the Leafs. Hooking him up with the pass-first Bozak and the pass-often Marner makes more sense than having him fight Auston "no, I'll score that myself, thanks" Matthews and William "I love having the puck" Nylander for some time with the rubber.

And that's exactly why Marleau might not work out with Matthews. He has a very similar offensive style to van Riemsdyk, and he shoots from very tight to the net like Matthews does. He does not shoot at quite the high rate of JvR, but it's close. Marleau has also spent a lot of years playing with the grand champion of pass-first centres in Joe Thornton.

Marleau - Matthews - Marner
Leivo - Kadri - Kapanen
Johnsson - Nylander - Brown
Rychel - Moore - Hyman
Soshnikov

The never-going-to-happen, all-fun-all-the-time lineup:

Leivo - Matthews - Nylander
Komorov - Kadri - Kapanen
JVR - Bozak - Marner
Hyman - Marleau - Brown
Moore

Gardiner - Zaitsev
Reilly - Carrick
Hainsey - Liljegren

I'd like to see that 4th line lining up against the fourth liners of any other team.