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Maple Leafs Training Camp 2024-25 Thread

Highlander said:
Sounds like Chief is not that high on Liljegren.  Wouldn't be surprised to see him moved out.  Janrok as well.
Feels and looks exactly the same up front maybe a tad worse. Change the lines! Try something new! Our 3rd pairing D is ugly: Timmins/Benoit combo? Yikes!

Lilijegren/Hakanpaa looks on paper superior to Timmins/Benoit. I really don't want to watch the exact same thing again this year.

I do think Tanev/Storlaz are big upgrades though.

23/24 Opening Day Roster

Bertuzzi-Matthews-Marner
Knies-Tavares-Nylander
Robertson-Domi-Jarnkrok
Lafferty-Kampf-Reaves

Extras: Holmberg

Rielly-Liljegren
McCabe-Brodie
Giordano-Klingberg

Extras: Timmins

Samsonov
Woll
Jones

24/25
 
Palmateer29 said:
Highlander said:
Sounds like Chief is not that high on Liljegren.  Wouldn't be surprised to see him moved out.  Janrok as well.

I'm a fan of Liljegren but to me Rafai and Myers have both outplayed him in the preseason.
Liljegren will jump over this bottom pairing in short order.
 
cabber24 said:
23/24 Opening Day Roster

For what it's worth opening night line-up last season was actually:

Bertuzzi-Matthews-Marner
Domi-Tavares-Nylander
Knies-Minten-Jarnkrok
Gregor-Kampf-Reaves

Rielly-Brodie
McCabe-Klingberg
Giordano-Liljegren

Samsonov
Woll
 
Palmateer29 said:
Highlander said:
Sounds like Chief is not that high on Liljegren.  Wouldn't be surprised to see him moved out.  Janrok as well.

I'm a fan of Liljegren but to me Rafai and Myers have both outplayed him in the preseason.

Haven't seen enough of the two but hopefully it's not Timmins as our 6th. Good with the puck but absolutely horrible defensively.
 
CarltonTheBear said:
For what it's worth opening night line-up last season was actually:

Bertuzzi-Matthews-Marner
Domi-Tavares-Nylander
Knies-Minten-Jarnkrok
Gregor-Kampf-Reaves

Rielly-Brodie
McCabe-Klingberg
Giordano-Liljegren

Samsonov
Woll

On top of internal growth... there are lots of incremental improvements up and down the lineup even if the bulk of the roster looks the same.

Knies < Bertuzzi at this exact moment, but Knies stands to pop off the most due to opportunity, and having the requisite training for the full grind

Bottom of the lineup looks more solid regardless of how it shakes out because of Lorentz and Dewar.

Marner on contract year > depressed Marner unsure of his future

Tavares on L3 > Domi L3

More McMann

Unleashed Robertson

Tanev >> broken Brodie
Ekman-Larsson > Edmundson
Hakanpaa (if healthy) > Lyubushkin

and maybe most importantly: Woll, Stolarz >>> Samsonov, Jones

I also don't want to oversell it, but having a coach (and one assistant) that has won a 16 playoff game run before makes a difference in approach, as does having some additional bodies on the bench that lived through the grind.
 
https://x.com/overdrive1050/status/1842319106529226780
?Craig wanted to get him some reps on the wing?

That was my interpretation initially. Berube?s system is new to the Leafs. Willy started at centre, but he?s usually the first guy getting accordions into a power shift so he does need to know wing routes/marks as well. If he?s going to be stuck with Domi, you might as well get them both mixing and matching on the fly.
 
herman said:
https://twitter.com/overdrive1050/status/1842319106529226780
?Craig wanted to get him some reps on the wing?

That was my interpretation initially. Berube?s system is new to the Leafs. Willy started at centre, but he?s usually the first guy getting accordions into a power shift so he does need to know wing routes/marks as well. If he?s going to be stuck with Domi, you might as well get them both mixing and matching on the fly.

They said similar things when Keefe pulled the plug last year too. It's over. Dream is dead.
 
Guilt Trip said:
OldTimeHockey said:
Guilt Trip said:
princedpw said:
I?m hoping for the best for Robertson and his shot is a laser.  But every year we see preseason guys who excel and come back down to earth when the regular season starts.  Robertson has had a bunch of wide open chances. He?ll probably have fewer of those when the defensive intensity ratchets up.
You mean like last year when he scored at a 20 goal rate playing 11 mins a night on the 3rd line? He's already proven he can score at a decent pace and nobody should be expecting him to score like he is now but I find it funny that a lot of you choose to ignore what he did last year. If he can pot 20 at 850K and play the kind of D he is now, he's exactly what the Leafs need.

I don't think anyone is ignoring what he did last year. I think people are saying to temper the expectations. Which I think is very reasonable.
Temper what expectations? That he can probably score 20ish goals for the Leafs and play solid defensively for 850K? That's reasonable but yeah let' pump the brakes here because nothing in his past suggests he can do that this season if given the chance.

Yes, temper expectations was the intent of my post, as oldTimeHockey suggested.  The ?vibe? on Robertson seems ?high? to me is all due to a lot of preseason goals.  But hey, maybe I?m misreading that.  Maybe it is nicely balanced.  To me, the thing that holds him back is the ability to stay on his feet and hold onto the puck under pressure.  If he can?t, it is going to continue limit his chances and impact, I think.  I can?t really tell if he has made a step forward until I see a chunk of regular season games. I hope he has!
 
Berube doesn't want to hear any more questions about 88 at C.  He'll get learned, soon enough, that you can't turn off the spigot in Toronto.
 
CarltonTheBear said:
herman said:
https://twitter.com/overdrive1050/status/1842319106529226780
?Craig wanted to get him some reps on the wing?

That was my interpretation initially. Berube?s system is new to the Leafs. Willy started at centre, but he?s usually the first guy getting accordions into a power shift so he does need to know wing routes/marks as well. If he?s going to be stuck with Domi, you might as well get them both mixing and matching on the fly.

They said similar things when Keefe pulled the plug last year too. It's over. Dream is dead.

If they were sincerely trying to work him into playing center, he needs to play there. Bouncing him around isn't going to get him oriented to playing center any time soon.

Berube's comment about Nylander working on faceoffs: Since 2016-17, among Leafs, Nylander is 6th in faceoffs taken (1,618) with a 50.7 win%. I realize that the concern might be more than just winning the draw. But if Nylander is going to get better at it, he needs the experience of playing the position. That is not rocket science. Berube knows this. And 50.7 win% isn't a bad starting place. He needs the reps.

Nylander strikes me as a very unique talent. There is no prior Leaf closely similar to him that I can think of off hand. He's like an artist on blades. He seems to think the game differently and in a split second, make it up as he goes along as circumstances present themselves. He does stuff that leaves you wondering 'how did he visualize that so quickly with all the moving parts on the ice?" It is not as widely cerebral as Gretzky. It tends to be more driven to "how do I get this rubber into the net" making rapid, unpredictable decisions on the fly.

He's above the fray of the Toronto media happily marching to the beat of his own drum.

How do you coach that? You flirt with messing with his special gift.
It is one thing for a winger to be as he is. A center has more defensive responsibility. Nylander has all the physical tools but he has a different mental make up. I suspect that is what Keefe and Berube quickly ran into.

If they wanted to turn him into a center, he should be playing center 24/7.
They're not doing that so they've obviously concluded something else.
They'll pretend to tinker with it to save face going forward.
 
princedpw said:
Guilt Trip said:
OldTimeHockey said:
Guilt Trip said:
princedpw said:
I?m hoping for the best for Robertson and his shot is a laser.  But every year we see preseason guys who excel and come back down to earth when the regular season starts.  Robertson has had a bunch of wide open chances. He?ll probably have fewer of those when the defensive intensity ratchets up.
You mean like last year when he scored at a 20 goal rate playing 11 mins a night on the 3rd line? He's already proven he can score at a decent pace and nobody should be expecting him to score like he is now but I find it funny that a lot of you choose to ignore what he did last year. If he can pot 20 at 850K and play the kind of D he is now, he's exactly what the Leafs need.

I don't think anyone is ignoring what he did last year. I think people are saying to temper the expectations. Which I think is very reasonable.
Temper what expectations? That he can probably score 20ish goals for the Leafs and play solid defensively for 850K? That's reasonable but yeah let' pump the brakes here because nothing in his past suggests he can do that this season if given the chance.

Yes, temper expectations was the intent of my post, as oldTimeHockey suggested.  The ?vibe? on Robertson seems ?high? to me is all due to a lot of preseason goals.  But hey, maybe I?m misreading that.  Maybe it is nicely balanced.  To me, the thing that holds him back is the ability to stay on his feet and hold onto the puck under pressure.  If he can?t, it is going to continue limit his chances and impact, I think.  I can?t really tell if he has made a step forward until I see a chunk of regular season games. I hope he has!

Tiny sample of games - one or two of them against NHL prospects.
He's the smallest and lightest player on the team  5'9" 178lbs. He's giving up 5"-7" and nearly 40lbs or more to wingers like Knies, McMann, Pacioretty & Lorentz. When the going gets tough, that's a mismatch if he's facing wingers like that.

If he gets ES ice time like last season with 2nd PP ice time and plays a full season, he'll score 20+ goals during the regular season. But the playoffs might be another story.
 
Guilt Trip said:
OldTimeHockey said:
Guilt Trip said:
princedpw said:
I?m hoping for the best for Robertson and his shot is a laser.  But every year we see preseason guys who excel and come back down to earth when the regular season starts.  Robertson has had a bunch of wide open chances. He?ll probably have fewer of those when the defensive intensity ratchets up.
You mean like last year when he scored at a 20 goal rate playing 11 mins a night on the 3rd line? He's already proven he can score at a decent pace and nobody should be expecting him to score like he is now but I find it funny that a lot of you choose to ignore what he did last year. If he can pot 20 at 850K and play the kind of D he is now, he's exactly what the Leafs need.

I don't think anyone is ignoring what he did last year. I think people are saying to temper the expectations. Which I think is very reasonable.
Temper what expectations? That he can probably score 20ish goals for the Leafs and play solid defensively for 850K? That's reasonable but yeah let's pump the brakes here because nothing in his past suggests he can do that this season if given the chance.

It's not crazy to think that it could happen. It's also not a foregone conclusion that it does. It isn't an easy task to score 20 goals in the NHL. It's an even more difficult task when you're getting 10-12 minutes a night.  It's also not a foregone conclusion hat he's going to play solid defensively. 5 preseason games against AHLers and some NHLers that are just out for a skate isn't exactly the competition he will face in the regular season and especially not in the playoffs. I'm not ignoring his scoring rate last year. I fully recognize that he scored at very good clip last year. I just worry that the results from last season, and a pretty good preseason has led to this expectation that he's a goal scoring machine. He's not. Not yet. And it's more likely he remains a pretty good third liner that puts up 10-15 goals than progressing to a 20+ goal scorer. If he does, I'm good with that. If he exceeds that, i'm ecstatic.
 
https://twitter.com/mirtle/status/1842990735756566998

Means Myers also isn't on waivers. At least not yet. Important to note that the roster set tomorrow could still not be the roster for Wednesday's opener. The important thing for the first day is maximizing LTIR, which is still probably happening with Hakanpaa and/or Dewar I guess.
 
Timmins staying up means Pacioretty won?t be paid as much as the flex contract to max LTIR, right?

I don?t know if Cowan is even going to get an NHL run given how he panned out in preseason without Minten. (Or maybe he wa sin his own head about junior habits)

Someone is getting traded
 
CarltonTheBear said:
Means Myers also isn't on waivers. At least not yet. Important to note that the roster set tomorrow could still not be the roster for Wednesday's opener. The important thing for the first day is maximizing LTIR, which is still probably happening with Hakanpaa and/or Dewar I guess.

Definitely set up to maximize cap efficiency. More moves are incoming.
 
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