L K
Well-known member
They were dumping in (without any semblance of chase) in a game where Vancouver did a great job of not being a slow and useless team. The Leafs are too slow to effectively dump and chase against fast teams
Interesting looking at the league wide standings...nobody running away with it at the half-season mark...talk about parity.
Last night I was thinking that there just wasn't someone stepping up physically to make some room in the o-zone...almost like they played as if they were defending a lead. I'd have thought the Leafs were the ones on the tail end of a back to back with travel, and not the other way around.
You could pick any random 2 minute clip of the game and copy paste it. The Leafs dump the puck in the offensive zone. Vancouver gets to it first and quickly moves the puck out of the zone. Rinse and repeat.
And I know I'm really harping on Rielly but enough is enough. He's our highest paid defenseman and he's beyond useless. He has no business being on the PP right now. He provides nothing of value right now. Maybe it's having a child at home. I get it. It's hard not sleeping but you play in the NHL where guys play with broken everything. It's a justification but it isn't reasonable.
And going back to the PP. it's been multiple coaches who get the same effort out of them. Rielly does slow drop passes to start attempts at zone entry. It's Nylander or Marner getting across the blueline and chipping the puck to Tavares who fumbles it along the boards and gets closed off leading to a board battle or cleared puck. It's Marner and Rielly passing the puck back and forth hoping the defender attached to Matthews hip has a stroke and just decides to leave him despite the Leafs doing nothing to force movement from the defenders.
We have had three head coaches in the core era. We have had 12 assistant coaches over that era. Two of our head coaches have been reputational hard asses in Berube and Babcock. Over that whole time no one has been able to get the Leafs to use a different breakout strategy on the powerplay? No one has been able to tell Rielly to shoot the puck once every 500 touches to at least give the false threat that he isn't going to pass the puck back to the closest forward not in a shooting position? No one has been able to tell them to move more than 5 feet from their location on to the ice to try and break down the defenders penalty kill setup?
It's unacceptable. It's a player problem. This team is better than last year in a lot of ways but the core is so flawed and I don't think these players have the ability to find the next gear to put teams away. It's a mentally soft team that plays in a league that requires you to be stupid to win a Cup. There isn't a Crosby or Kucherov or MacKinnon on this team. The blue line can't score. It's becoming pretty clear that we need a scoring winger, a 3rd line Center and at least another defenseman if this team wants to win. And all of that is irrelevant if Matthews back is done. He has no business playing in the 4 Nations cup if he can't put together more the two or three effective games in a row. He was terrible in both the Carolina and Vancouver games
They got out worked at home, against a team that played 3 in four nights. That got dominated by Carolina the night before. That had to travel on game day because of weather. The Leafs find a way to make every game like this a mess. They lose to David Ayers. They lost to Detroit last year with the same travel situation. They find ways to play down in the moment.
But don't worry. Mitch felt their effort was good.
I feel sorry for the kid who got to go to their first live Leafs game and got rewarded with that effort. I feel sorry for the family that saved pennies to spend hundreds of dollars on upper bowl tickets to take their family to this game only for the Leafs to not show up.
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