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2024-25 Toronto Maple Leafs General Discussion

Berube commented today that Liljegren has been having better practices and may get into the lineup this week.
Woll was on the ice but not with the team. He's improving
Tavares was not on the ice but is improved.
 
Leafs started the season with 3 games in 4 days.

They're in the middle of a 1 game in 6 days stretch.

That's followed up with 6 games in 10 days.

Anyway that does give Woll a bit of time to fully recover from whatever he's dealing with here. He's probably targeting a return a week from now when the Leafs have a back-to-back on Mon/Tues.
 
herman said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1846562213240152343
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As usual, some good points here. Conor Timmins getting big PK minutes is certainly not something I had expected early this season, or ever really. He's obviously just a Hakanpaa (big RHD) fill-in and I don't think he's exactly been perfect there but hey, hasn't been scored on yet so that's big. Showing that he can add that aspect to his game certainly puts him back as a very serious waiver claim threat if it comes to that.

The OEL-McCabe pairing has obviously been lights out, but I wonder if that's really a long-term thing. Once Hakanpaa hopefully returns does that leave him with Benoit on the 3rd pair? Obviously a distinct lack of puck moving ability there if that's the case.

Knies is a beast. Sign that man now.

I agree about Domi's usage. Either up with Matthews or centering a 3rd line is the best spot for him. On the wing with Tavares and Nylander just doesn't feel right.

Kampf's usage to start the season has certainly been bizarre. A part of me wonders if they're essentially doing a trial-run on what the team would look like without him if he needs to be dealt for cap/roster space. Holmberg I think has shown he could handle the 4th line 5-on-5 duties, but the early results of him handling top PK responsibilities have certainly been meh at best.
 
CarltonTheBear said:
As usual, some good points here. Conor Timmins getting big PK minutes is certainly not something I had expected early this season, or ever really. He's obviously just a Hakanpaa (big RHD) fill-in and I don't think he's exactly been perfect there but hey, hasn't been scored on yet so that's big. Showing that he can add that aspect to his game certainly puts him back as a very serious waiver claim threat if it comes to that.

The OEL-McCabe pairing has obviously been lights out, but I wonder if that's really a long-term thing. Once Hakanpaa hopefully returns does that leave him with Benoit on the 3rd pair? Obviously a distinct lack of puck moving ability there if that's the case.

Knies is a beast. Sign that man now.

I agree about Domi's usage. Either up with Matthews or centering a 3rd line is the best spot for him. On the wing with Tavares and Nylander just doesn't feel right.

Kampf's usage to start the season has certainly been bizarre. A part of me wonders if they're essentially doing a trial-run on what the team would look like without him if he needs to be dealt for cap/roster space. Holmberg I think has shown he could handle the 4th line 5-on-5 duties, but the early results of him handling top PK responsibilities have certainly been meh at best.
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Sample size is too small to take seriously but all dman have been on for 2 goals against except Rielly who has a shutout going.

I agree with your Domi comments. I also do not think he and Nylander are a good mix together defensively.
I'd also avoid pairing Domi with Marner -> arguably, the two Leafs forwards with the most talent for distributing the puck.

Rifai might be a better 5-6 partner for Hakanpaa than any of the others below 1-4.
Wouldn't commit to anything like that before assuring Hakanpaa can sustain and play effectively.

With OEL & Rielly on the PP, Timmins makes more sense physically for the PK compared with Liljegren based on the style of PK they seem to intend to play.

I'm not going to hand-wring much over it because the roster will probably have to change at some point due to cap or contract limits unless they hit a string of LTIR injuries.
 
A few jarring hits of late by McMann and Knies. Both surprised me when they happened. Exciting to see a rebranded style. Playing heavy, I like it.
 
McMann currently sits 6th in NHL goals per 60 (ES or 5v5) for players with 40 or more games over the last 2 seasons.
A little cherry picking there (only 59 GP) but for a guy they waived and cleared (Oct 10, 2023) - a little more than a year ago ... there's something undeniably positive going on there. The goals last night looked like his AHL goals. He's been doing this kind of thing for more than 3 seasons now. Pretty neat story.
 
Heavy heavy Berube-ball hockey is a new look for sure, and probably the best way for this group to start having playoff success. The downside will be higher susceptibility to fatigue and injuries. The former will have to be managed and the latter tolerated.
 
CarltonTheBear said:
Would be a little bit surprising to see Pacioretty sit back to back on the other hand. Think you could have probably put him in for either one of Holmberg or Robertson after last game.
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One of the things the dev team did on the Marlies was holding healthy players off the game rosters to fine tune mechanics (e.g. Mason Marchment). Given Pacioretty has talked about his injury-compensation hitches in his stride, I suspect this is a similar case of getting some reps.

Edit: I'm trying to find that article that mentioned Pacioretty talking about the skating dev team noticing his hip mechanics were off.
Edit 2: Found it: https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/toron...ping-max-pacioretty-find-his-way-back-to-form

"It's always tough to come into a new team and get acclimated especially quickly," Pacioretty told The Hockey News. "I liked my first two games. (I) definitely didn't like my last game, personally."

It turns out the Leafs' performance staff didn't like what they saw, either. The staff had noticed points in his stride that seemed to affect his posture and acceleration, a constant battle the player is going through as he avoids compensation issues from having gone through Achilles surgery three times in the last two years.
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