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Armchair GM Thread 2024-25

Ozzie said:
I refer you to the last two playoff games played by this team where 100% of the goal production (and it was all 'clutch' goal production in very tight games) was from Nylander. He came back from injury and was the entire goal machine.

2021 against Montreal he also was by far the best producing Leaf on the ice. He got 5 goals vs the next best of the Core5 who got 1.

Guess how many Marner got in the 7 games? Let me give you a guess.... it rhymes with Nero.

Nylander is the most consistently producing Leaf in the playoffs in this 'Matthews Era'.
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And Nylander's linemates for that series? None other than Alex Kerfoot, Alex Galchenyuk(!), and a couple games of a hobbled Nick Foligno. But at least he wasn't switched to a different position for the playoffs and tasked with carrying a washed up Patrick Marleau and Connor Brown..
 
OldTimeHockey said:
Hold on a second here. Do we really think that Knies is in "beast mode"? Really? Because he's cleaning up the trash that Matthews and Marner create?

He's playing well, but come on. He has 7 points in 12 games. Yes 6 are goals, but some of those are a result of who he's playing with as opposed to "beast mode".

I'm all for getting him signed, but I don't know that he's more valuable than Byfield. Yes Byfield is off to a slow start, but I don't think you can judge either players based on a 12 game showing.
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Delusional...and def not more then Byfield...it's not that close yet
 
I think Marner has been pretty damn good, as well as Nylander. Matthews isn't himself, but we have plenty of history showing he can go on a bender and score 2 goals a game for games on end...I'm not worried about Matthews. I'm not even worried about the PP, there's so much talent there that I think there's just a puck luck problem right now...and again, we have a lot of history there to suggest that the PP will be just fine and it's more about the small sample size.

What does concern me is the lack (so far) of gelling in the bottom 6, and I'm just not seeing what that bottom 6 is supposed to be.

The goaltending seems fine, and the PK seems fine.

Robertson has 1 goal and 0 assists in 10 games, and the Leafs have played 12 games. He's getting reps. Maybe Jarnkrok or Dewar can provide a little more stability to a line there, but who comes out?
 
OldTimeHockey said:
I'm all for getting him signed, but I don't know that he's more valuable than Byfield. Yes Byfield is off to a slow start, but I don't think you can judge either players based on a 12 game showing.
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You're right, a 12 game stretch is not enough to justify that, which is why any Knies contract will wait - that was the point of the Byfield comparison. TML would be reluctant to put him on Byfield status today (reasonable), but if Knies scores 30+ (plausible), looking at contracts signed in 2024, that is going to be the range he's targeting.
 
Largely just spit-balling here because I think a TOR-PIT trade is about as likely as a CGY-TOR trade right now but I wonder about Bunting there. Was great last season post-trade (19 points in 21 games) but struggled this season (4 points in 17 games). Would something like Robertson for Bunting, with Pittsburgh needing to take Kampf+Jarnkrok to balance out the cap, make any sense? Could give us a healthy line-up of:

Knies-Matthews-Marner
Pacioretty-Tavares-Nylander
Bunting-Domi-McMann
Dewar-Lorentz-Reaves/Holmberg

That 3rd line could be an absolute pain in the A to play against while also hopefully being able to actually add offence too. Also gives Berube a legit alternative for LW1 if he wants to move Knies around the line-up a little more, which as of right now I don't think really exists.

Biggest issue is that it still keeps Domi at 3C, which maybe isn't ideal, while also using up our only cap clearing moves. But with minimal picks will there even be an opportunity to improve the C position this year via trade? Maybe not.
 
Guilt Trip said:
4.5M for Bunting says no thx and he will not produce at all on L3. Kampf is a better 3C then Domi
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I agree with Guilt Trip.

Bunting is one of my favorite former Leafs, being a Scarborough boy like Simmons. But it seems his time has past for most Leaf fans.... and his production is mostly attributable to him being on L1.

For 4.5m or even add a million or two, we can get someone significantly stronger in terms of grit and production. Greasy Rat needs to find another home.
 
Guilt Trip said:
4.5M for Bunting says no thx and he will not produce at all on L3. Kampf is a better 3C then Domi
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The extra year on the deal makes it an even easier no for me. On an expiring deal, you might be able to make the case he's among the best available options (though, I suspect, as we get closer to the deadline, that will be a harder and harder case to make), but with another year at $4.5M on that contract, it's a poor use of future cap space.
 
If Seattle is on the outside looking in come playoff time, Yanni Gourde is the guy I'd want. Was a 3C on a cup winning team, so he's got the pedigree.
 
Bill_Berg said:
I'm going to guess he wouldn't want to come here, but the Preds are in last place I hear.
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Yeah there’s that. It’s weird because when he came here he seemed so stoked. Like he belonged here. And then he started talking about the quiet life and anonymity of nashville.

Look realistically speaking I don’t think he comes here via trade, mostly because I still think he has 2 years on his contract after this season, but I feel that if it did happen, he’d welcome it.
 
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Joe S. said:
Yeah there’s that. It’s weird because when he came here he seemed so stoked. Like he belonged here. And then he started talking about the quiet life and anonymity of Toronto.

Look realistically speaking I don’t think he comes here via trade, mostly because I still think he has 2 years on his contract after this season, but I feel that if it did happen, he’d welcome it.
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Although he gave another official explanation, OReilly and Schenn gave hints that they left the Leafs because the team was too soft in terms of the will to win. This could be an indictment on the core players or on the coaching and management under Dubas and Keefe. My guess is on both.

The latter has changed. The former has not. The attractive thing for OReilly is that the latter has changed to a coach that brought out the best in OReilly to win the Cup. So maybe he would come back.

The only time the Leafs have won a playoff series in the past 20 years was when he was on the team. The guy was blocking shots and getting clutch goals and he seemed to care more about winning on a team he joined for a couple of months than the players that had been on it for years.

Has that changed?
 
Ozzie said:
Although he gave another official explanation, OReilly and Schenn gave hints that they left the Leafs because the team was too soft in terms of the will to win. This could be an indictment on the core players or on the coaching and management under Dubas and Keefe. My guess is on both.

The latter has changed. The former has not. The attractive thing for OReilly is that the latter has changed to a coach that brought out the best in OReilly to win the Cup. So maybe he would come back.

The only time the Leafs have won a playoff series in the past 20 years was when he was on the team. The guy was blocking shots and getting clutch goals and he seemed to care more about winning on a team he joined for a couple of months than the players that had been on it for years.

Has that changed?
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I really don't think he wanted the spotlight. Kind of a bizarre theory going to the Preds then.
 
I really don't buy the theory that ROR was sending out coded messages in interviews that he actually hated the locker room and/or coach. Like that's just not something a hockey player would do even if he felt that way. He left because not everyone's cut out to play in Toronto and also because he didn't want to play a 2nd or maybe even 3rd line role on a team. I don't think we have to dig much deeper than that.
 
CarltonTheBear said:
I really don't buy the theory that ROR was sending out coded messages in interviews that he actually hated the locker room and/or coach. Like that's just not something a hockey player would do even if he felt that way. He left because not everyone's cut out to play in Toronto and also because he didn't want to play a 2nd or maybe even 3rd line role on a team. I don't think we have to dig much deeper than that.
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That was my read on the situation, as well. ROR left because, as much as he initially liked the idea of playing here, the reality didn't work for him. There are some cities in the league where there's a lot more pressure on players than in others, where they can't live their lives outside of hockey as privately as they'd like, etc. Toronto is 100% one of those cities, whereas Nashville is very much not. I think him ending up there when reportedly teams in higher pressure cities offered him similar contracts (and, IIRC, in some cases, more money) is much more telling than anything else.
 
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