sens @ Leafs - Jan. 10th, 7:30pm - SN, TSN 1050

[bustaheims]

How was Polak responsible for the lose this evening.

He scored the sens first goal and didn't play his man well enough on the 3rd.

On top of that, just having a more talented defenceman playing those minutes improves the team. Better defensive coverage, better decisions with the puck, better support for his teammates. All that adds up to a better overall team performance. It's really that simple.

 

[dekedastardly]

Babcock: "Leo alone could've had three in the 3rd period"....... 

LOL

 

[Chris]

Maybe you have to bench Rielly in the last 4 minutes of close games. I'm saying that in jest, but the guy has to use his brain in those situations. Hainsey certainly didn't help on that play, he really overplayed the 3 on 1 but it was...a 3 on 1 because of Rielly.

I don't hate Polak as much as some here, but I saw enough the past few games from Dermott to think he should be in the lineup until he proves he doesn't belong (or until Zaitsev returns). Polak is a good stop gap if someone has to miss a game or two but at this point I don't see any really good reason for him to be in the lineup on a regular basis.

 

[freer]

Well yes there is! Fine Bench him next game.
if they are rolling sit the defence, then sit Reilly for losing us 3 pts. Just saying

 

[BrownRolo]

Look at this goal by Polak. He actually has a distinct kicking motion to put it in his own net. I love how after it goes in he puts his head to the sky like "Please coach, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't want to play anymore." So dumb.

https://twitter.com/JeffVeillette/status/951258317824897025

 

[dekedastardly]

I think the onus is also on Marleau, Kadri, and some other passengers too.  Make some internal lineup adjustments, shake up the PP units, etc. etc.  But don't make excuses for losing to teams that you have no business losing to.

Agree. I'm not sure what Kadri and Marleau's problems are the past while, but they've been shit. Perhaps they should be split up. Also, Matt Martin brings very little to the team. Hopefully Zaitsev comes back right after this break.

 

[lc9]

I think the onus is also on Marleau, Kadri, and some other passengers too.  Make some internal lineup adjustments, shake up the PP units, etc. etc.  But don't make excuses for losing to teams that you have no business losing to.

Agree. I'm not sure what Kadri and Marleau's problems are the past while, but they've been shit. Perhaps they should be split up. Also, Matt Martin brings very little to the team. Hopefully Zaitsev comes back right after this break.

Matt Martin has no business in the NHL. This lineup makes absolutely no sense on any level.

 

[Chris]

Agree. I'm not sure what Kadri and Marleau's problems are the past while

(ahem ** Komarov?  **)

They've definitely been off lately regardless of Komarov, though.

 

[Al14]

Our Leafs have lost to the lowly Sens both games so far this season!  :-[

Our Leafs STINK! 

 

[AvroArrow]

Wow, what a bunch of whiners... Reilly has a couple mistakes in a couple games and suddenly he's dog shit garbage... Better run him out of town now, guys... Ignore everything he's done up until now because he made TWO FRIGGIN' MISTAKES.  Boo-hoo... Somebody call the whaaaambulance.

 

[BrownRolo]

I think the onus is also on Marleau, Kadri, and some other passengers too.  Make some internal lineup adjustments, shake up the PP units, etc. etc.  But don't make excuses for losing to teams that you have no business losing to.

Agree. I'm not sure what Kadri and Marleau's problems are the past while, but they've been shit. Perhaps they should be split up. Also, Matt Martin brings very little to the team. Hopefully Zaitsev comes back right after this break.

Yeah Marleau has been trash.

 

[Guilt Trip]

Agree. I'm not sure what Kadri and Marleau's problems are the past while

(ahem ** Komarov?  **)

They've definitely been off lately regardless of Komarov, though.

Komarov is def an issue but c'mon. Kadri has no goals in 15 games and 1 assist in 19...That's pathetic.

 

[Strangelove]

Agree. I'm not sure what Kadri and Marleau's problems are the past while

(ahem ** Komarov?  **)

They've definitely been off lately regardless of Komarov, though.

Komarov is def an issue but c'mon. Kadri has no goals in 15 games and 1 assist in 19...That's pathetic.

Playing exclusively with Komarov, who has been an offensive black hole the entire season. Komarov should have been demoted to the fourth line 10 weeks ago, but instead Babcock has him anchored to Kadri?s side. Not to mention kadris other winger, Marleau, has looked washed up for about 10 games (though I have faith that he?ll snap out of it).

I?d love to see Kapanen inserted into Komarov?s spot. Clearly something has to give, since the line hasn?t produced in ages.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

Just watched the last goal. I'm usually pretty quick to defend defencemen when they pinch and fail by saying that a forward should have backed them up, but Rielly saw all 3 forwards directly in front of them (2 of them were in the corner). He had to know that he had no support. Pretty brutal decision. But not one that you usually see from him so I won't lose my mind about it or anything. Hainsey's attempt to defend that 3-on-1 was equally bad. No idea what he was thinking.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

Gardiner played over 28 minutes last night? Woah. Babs really leaned heavily on him eh? I'm not pointing any fingers at anybody here because I actually think it's more of a social media thing where this happens, but it's funny how the same people who often scream "Babcock trusts Polak you have to respect that because he's the coach" are usually the same ones saying Gardiner is a terrible defenceman.

 

[Strangelove]

Gardiner played over 28 minutes last night? Woah. Babs really leaned heavily on him eh? I'm not pointing any fingers at anybody here because I actually think it's more of a social media thing where this happens, but it's funny how the same people who often scream "Babcock trusts Polak you have to respect that because he's the coach" are usually the same ones saying Gardiner is a terrible defenceman.

I've never understood the Gardiner hate that has persisted over the years. I think there's a certain type of fan who relies on the eyeball test without being fully aware of the value of possession, positioning, and the ability to rush with the puck. To their mind's eye, Gardiner looks like he's playing lackadaisical even where, for the most part, he isn't.

Gardiner is pretty clearly the Leafs' second best defencemen (and was, until recently, their best), so the idea that he should be lumped in with the likes of Polak, Komarov and Martin is laughable.

 

[L K]

I think one of the things that has frustrated me is the team seems to be trending in the wrong direction for me.  I know there is going to be "pain" as the team continues to develop but the culture/style change seems to be making the team quite the opposite of what I was excited about.  This was a young fast team last year/the start of this season.  Now they seem to be slower than most of their opponents, focus more on dumping in rather than using their skill and it seems to have muted the skill level of the team.

We have players like Kapanen, Leivo, Carrick, Johnson, Soshnikov getting passed over for what I feel are inferior players and the standard for accountability that Babcock has preached seems to be only applicable to Marner/Nylander getting dropped to the 4th line.

Bring back the exciting team.

 

[herman]

Pre-bye week, Babcock cut loose with the minutes for his top players that he normally boxes up into mostly balanced slots. The bottom of the lineup got next to nothing and stalwarts like Komarov were cut back significantly too.

Rielly played 25+ for both last night and the Columbus game, and made a brain cramp over-aggressive play towards the end of both games that ended up in the net. It's part of his learning curve to see what he does with more minutes than usual.

He was flying all throughout both games and looked like he could do anything. Sometimes that gets to your head and you fly too close to the sun and get burned. We know from our years of overusing Phaneuf that defensemen getting towards 30 minutes of ice time (especially at the speeds and situations that Rielly plays at) start to see more mental mistakes creep in.

Fans might say at the time, what the hell was he thinking there? From what I've seen and heard of professional sports, especially hockey, is that if you are thinking, you're already behind the game. Basically, Rielly's mistakes were instinctive responses at a time when his game processing might have been at its limits.

We could obviously see all 3 forwards in one corner, so we knew it was a bad idea to pinch. Stepping back a bit, we've also seen recently that Babcock has been trying out lateral pinch support from the weak-side defense. Maybe Rielly expected Hainsey there. Maybe Hainsey's read on the situation was that was too much pressure coming back to jump in on.

I can see why Rielly pinched. They had just stuffed Karlsson's breakout attempt on their dump in. Matthews dove in for a puck that he thought he could get (but he's been a bit slow the past week, so he couldn't). He should have sagged off too, but didn't. Rielly saw that and wanted to turn the losing 1v1 into a winning 2v1 and vision gets a bit tunnely by that point of the game.

In general, I don't have problems with players being confident and aggressive. Sometimes we get burned, but I'd rather they get burned making mistakes while trying to do something instead of getting shelled repeatedly by playing it safe.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

Noticed Komarov didn't get any powerplay time last night. Babcock mentioned the other day the team would need to look into his minutes there given his lack of production. Problem is Marleau and Brown have even worse production rates on the PP. I know it's unreasonable to expect all 10 players who are on the powerplay to score all the time, but those three players have 5 powerplay points between them this season. And 2 of the 3 are usually on the Matthews/Nylander unit and I think that's really held them back.

I'm not sure what the answer is. One suggestion that I saw somewhere was playing JVR on both units. For the past few years JVR's been one of the best powerplay producers in the entire league. But because of how the Leafs play 2 units equally last year he only averaged 2:24 on the PP and this year it's 2:21. That puts him in a tie for 137th in the league in PP ice-time per game with the likes of Sven Baertschi, Ryan Dzingel, and Christian Fischer.

He'd be the perfect player to have on both units too since the Matthews one has nobody to play in front of the net. And since he doesn't do puck retrievals in his own end he's not skating up and down the ice a lot. He basically just goes from the goal line to the blue line, that wouldn't be very taxing. Hainsey basically does the same thing on the PK. He also doesn't play very much at 5-on-5, averaging just about 12 minutes a game, so he should be pretty fresh.

 

[L K]

Noticed Komarov didn't get any powerplay time last night. Babcock mentioned the other day the team would need to look into his minutes there given his lack of production. Problem is Marleau and Brown have even worse production rates on the PP. I know it's unreasonable to expect all 10 players who are on the powerplay to score all the time, but those three players have 5 powerplay points between them this season. And 2 of the 3 are usually on the Matthews/Nylander unit and I think that's really held them back.

I'm not sure what the answer is. One suggestion that I saw somewhere was playing JVR on both units. For the past few years JVR's been one of the best powerplay producers in the entire league. But because of how the Leafs play 2 units equally last year he only averaged 2:24 on the PP and this year it's 2:21. That puts him in a tie for 137th in the league in PP ice-time per game with the likes of Sven Baertschi, Ryan Dzingel, and Christian Fischer.

He'd be the perfect player to have on both units too since the Matthews one has nobody to play in front of the net. And since he doesn't do puck retrievals in his own end he's not skating up and down the ice a lot. He basically just goes from the goal line to the blue line, that wouldn't be very taxing. Hainsey basically does the same thing on the PK. He also doesn't play very much at 5-on-5, averaging just about 12 minutes a game, so he should be pretty fresh.

I wonder if it isn't possible to have an overload PP of Marner-Matthews-Nylander-JVR-Rielly/Gardiner