Guilt Trip
Active member
The bitching was more about the line matching crap. No complaining lately because we were just on the road and winning.Frycer14 said:
Blue Jackets @ Leafs - Nov. 19th, 7:00pm - SNO, TSN 1050
- Thread starter CarltonTheBear
- Start date
herman
Well-known member
Guilt Trip said:
I know what you're getting at, and trust me I was there back in 2016 saying the same thing.
Hyman is playing is off wing (hard to do), and almost always F1 on the forecheck (hard to do), and wins a lot of the races (very hard to do) night in and night out. He takes the body so his linemates don't need to as often.
He's good at freeing up the puck, but not so good with doing anything specific with it other than shoveling to an area. So he's kind of perfect to play with two cycling players like Tavares and Marner. This opens up Johnsson and Marleau to play with Matthews and Kadri to dominate lesser match ups. Playing Hyman on the third line, for example, would be effective insofar as forechecking is concerned, but then the third line doesn't really have the puckmoving or finishing talent the Tavares or Matthews lines do, so Hyman's work is wasted.
herman
Well-known member
Hyman also plays on the backhand side of his centres, where he's not expected to transition up the ice with them on give and gos (Tavares - Marner, Matthews - Nylander, Kadri - Kapanen), so his lack of puck handling is almost meaningless. In any case, you've seen Hyman on shorthanded breakaways going backhand, forehand, roof; or stripping a defender, deking his partner, and pulling Lundqvist out of the cage for an emphatic solo shortie, so he's not without skill.
Some of those top heavy 1st lines are built that way because they really don't have the driving depth to support multiple lines. Take Pastrnak or Marchand off the top and try to boost the lower lines and it doesn't work that well because neither of those two have enough support to drive the second line effectively enough. I can't even name anyone on Colorado's second line or below.
Some of those top heavy 1st lines are built that way because they really don't have the driving depth to support multiple lines. Take Pastrnak or Marchand off the top and try to boost the lower lines and it doesn't work that well because neither of those two have enough support to drive the second line effectively enough. I can't even name anyone on Colorado's second line or below.
Guilt Trip
Active member
I hear ya Herman. Would still like to see Bab's try it when/if we ice a full line up, including Nylander.
bustaheims
Active member
Nik the Trik said:
Yup. Teams that have depth are harder to beat than teams that load up their top line. Replacing Hyman with someone with more of a scoring touch is always an option available when the team needs a goal, but spreading the talent more evenly through the lineup - at least, when you have the depth of talent the Leafs do - is how you maximize your success.
Also, as much as it gets repeated ad nauseum, Hyman?s ability to win puck battles is a big part of that line?s success.
Stronger Than All
New member
I like Mitch Marner. This is a recording.
herman
Well-known member
Guilt Trip said:
As much as I'm stumping for him, I'll be pissed if we don't move on from Hyman at the end of his contract. If we win a Cup before 2021, Hyman is going to hit the market hard. We'll have Trevor Moore or Dymytro Timashov or Carl Grundstrom or maybe even Yegor Korshkov making 1-1.8M instead.
Phileas Fogg
New member
Funny, I never considered Hagelin as a Hyman type of player. Didn't he win the fastest player at the skills comp a few years back, and was dangerous on the rush using that speed, as opposed to spadework on the boards?
Guilt Trip
Active member
Well the positive is we don't pay him too much yet. I think he asks for a lot more next one tho and that will be the time the Leafs need to move on from him and also Brown.herman said:
Phileas Fogg
New member
Bender said:
Naw, I wasn't thinking the azzuri guy. There's another guy who just comes by on losses and unloads on how terrible a coach Babcock is.
Phileas Fogg
New member
Zee said:
We'll find out on the next loss! Hopefully not too soon.
herman
Well-known member
Re: Dubas signing 'goons' and then trying to skill them up:Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate said:
First off, let me just preface by saying this is entirely me theory-mongering. Secondly, Katya at PPP already wrote up an analysis on a similar vein of this topic which is worth a read, especially if you haven't had a chance to follow the Marlies much.
https://www.pensionplanpuppets.com/2018/5/2/17303140/kyle-dubas-toronto-marlies-general-manager-history-ahl-goons-modern-development-system
The AHL is an interesting league: it's the place NHL teams stuff their older prospects, but also where some of their waning players are put to pasture. Not every team has the financial clout of MLSE either, so they're often afterthoughts. As such, since the 04-05 lockout at the changes to the game implemented on the NHL level, the AHL became a fighters' league.
Fighters are an interesting breed of hockey player: the spectrum runs from nasty-mean people breaker, to soft-spoken dude who just happened to be big. If you've read any interviews or more sadly obituaries of hockey fighters, the pattern appears: they don't want to fight, but the culture they were in caused them to feel they must to protect their teammates, to stand out since their playing skills couldn't carry the load consistently. Almost to a man, teammates of fighters would profess their appreciation of their ice guardians and how good they were in the dressing room. As a result, fighters, who once had aspirations of scoring important goals, spent their time honing other skills instead to survive.
When Kyle Dubas took over the Marlies, he added goons, but was a bit more selective than just picking the best fighters; what better way to test out your analytics and development ideas than with very affordable cast offs whose development paths were curtailed by circumstance? The PPP article gets into this, but it was also obvious from the fairly public story of Rich Clune that Dubas was looking at people who could inspire professionalism as well as physical and mental well-being within the ranks of the team (if I'm reading between the lines, this was around the time Kadri was team-suspended and a couple of high-profile Leafs were moved in whatever possible fashion).
The market inefficiency here was taking players no one wanted anymore (fighters), and then leveraging all the moneys already spent on development to bring their games back up to (and beyond) what they were when they were only focused on hockey (see Mason Marchment), and also taking advantage of these players' natural leadership abilities, sense of responsibility, and professionalism to shepherd what was a really a bumper crop of prospect talent.
The Marlies have since stopped looking for fights, but remained equipped to handle them should the need arise; the emphasis of toughness is not in the fisticuffs but on maintaining your skating balance to shrug off hits, body positioning to hang onto the puck, and the mentality to keep playing and scoring.