Leafs @ Panthers - Mar. 14th, 7:30pm - TSN4, Fan 590
- Thread starter CarltonTheBear
- Start date
Spider
New member
This is not a playoff team, let's enjoy the youth on this team. I couldn't have imagined, after last year, that this team would be this close to a playoff spot. I will not be disappointed if they miss out. Many of the players will probably play for in the World Championshis anyway (playoff type experience).
hockeyfan1
New member
Maybe the fish got to them. Seriously, the team, make that the defence, fell apart, so to speak. Which means that they're most likely slated to lose against the Lightning in their next game, unless...(fill in the blank).
crazyperfectdevil
New member
win three games in a row..lose one...time to give up? okay guys...
hockeyfan1
New member
crazyperfectdevil said:
No, no one says to "give up', not when every game counts. It's just that when their defence flounders, as has been the case for much of this season, the LeafsNation's heart sinks a little lo...r.
I still have faith in a playoff appearance, but even if it doesn't happen, I'll be cheering anyways for this team that has entertained us all season long
Zee
Active member
crazyperfectdevil said:
It's not just last night, it's the way they've been playing since the All Star break. The team has been getting outplayed on many nights. Sure they won three in a row before last night but it was against really weak teams in the conference, I mean they did what they had to and won those games, but even against those crappy teams it was a struggle. Not looking very promising when they need to play Tampa and Chicago next.
bustaheims
Active member
crazyperfectdevil said:
Or, you know, you could look at the fact that they only have 8 wins in their last 22 games, and have basically been a .500 team for the last 2 months.
bustaheims said:
Which is the same sort of cycle as the Kessel years. Start somewhat slowly, have a big November, or December, start to tail off a bit before the all star break, implode afterwards. That's the scary thing in all of this. The fact that they have rolled the roster to a certain degree, but the same pattern exists.
bustaheims said:
Well that roughly lines up to when Rielly returned (20 games ago). In that time, the Leafs have given up 40 5-on-5 goals. Rielly has been on the ice for 27 of them. Zaitsev 26. The other 6 defencemen to have played for the team during that stretch have been on the ice for a COMBINED 28 goals.
Britishbulldog
Active member
Zee said:
That's what I was thinking exactly.
I am concerned that they rushed the rebuild with getting Andersen, Martin and dumping Bernier, Michalek, Laich, Greening.
A line up of:
Michalek / Matthews / Nylander
JVR / Bozak / Marner
Komarov / Kadri / Brown
Hyman / Laich / Soshnikov
-current defense-
Bernier
.......might not have been much worse in the standings. I don't know.
Could the collapse be pinned on one player? Rielly? Maybe. He is playing hard minutes against the leagues top players EVERY game. If he doesn't have the speed and agility he had before he was injured 20+ games ago.....
I wouldn't give up on him yet. I hope we keep him 3 or 4 more years before we make a verdict.
bustaheims
Active member
Significantly Insignificant said:
In this case, I think the cause is different, though. With the age of/lack of experience on the roster this season, a lot of the players are hitting the kind of wall many rookies face in their first couple full NHL seasons. Whereas, in the past, they just weren't good enough to compete once the games started getting more meaningful/intense.
Kin
New member
Significantly Insignificant said:
Is that really an identifiable pattern though? Or is it just a result of those teams not being very good? We're ascribing a sort of narrative to these things but it seems like the "cycle" you're describing is of a team that isn't very good most of the time but has brief moments of stringing together some decent play before fatigue/injuries expose them as having no depth.
Because, after just a quick look at the Kessel years individually, I'm not sure a real pattern does emerge. The idea that they always started slowly, for instance, falls apart pretty quickly.
Honestly, it just looks like the Leafs during those years were a team that lost more often than not without much of a pattern.
Nik the Trik said:
Perhaps. I'd have to go through and look at their records at different parts of the season. I just remember the 18 wheeler off a cliff comment, and that came after the Leafs had maintained a playoff spot for most of the year, only to win something like 4 of their last 25 games and fall down far enough to get Reilly.
Even the year that they made the playoffs in the shortened season, it looked like they were hitting a wall, in which if the season had been longer they may have missed out.
In those years though, the possession numbers spoke to those teams eventually hitting some sort of self correction that would mean that the wins that the had obtained to that point had been mostly do to luck. Those teams were bad defensively, and the offense mainly came from JVR, Bozak and Kessel
The possession numbers are better now but the defence is still a train wreck.
Maybe I should have just said, before the Leafs were bad defensively, and in the years where they eventually dropped out of playoff contention, their poor play defensively was considered to be the root cause. The Leafs are still a poor team defensively, and unless they can fix that part of their game, then these tail offs at the end of the season are probably going to continue.
Kin
New member
Significantly Insignificant said:
All I'm trying to say is that the better a team generally is the less likely they are to have any extended stretches where they lose a lot and as a result we're less likely to try to search for reasons as to why a team sort of reverted to it's talent level over time or ascribed a narrative dependent on when they played bad over the course of a year(eg "started slow", "imploded", "hit a wall").
If you have three roughly equal teams all of whom finish with 90 points but one has a strong first half, the other a strong second half and the third is pretty even throughout then the tendency will be to describe the first team as "chokers" or the second team as having figured things out or, if they miss the playoffs, only playing well without pressure or whatever when it can just be, you know, the vagaries of the schedule/luck/whatever.