Sheldon Keefe has been relieved of his role as head coach
- Thread starter CarltonTheBear
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Guilt Trip
Well-known member
I thought Keefe was a very good coach. 5th best winning percentage in NHL history. They failed in the playoffs and that's the reason he's gone. I've said it before, Keefe was too loyal to these guys and it's hard to blame him. He always believed they'd come through for him.
Anyway I wish him well. I enjoyed him as a coach overall.
The Leafs need to get a better coach and some that are mentioned right now look more of a sideways move then anything else except for 1 guy. Not sure they go down that road but I would be looking into it. Different voice doesn't always equate success.
Anyway I wish him well. I enjoyed him as a coach overall.
The Leafs need to get a better coach and some that are mentioned right now look more of a sideways move then anything else except for 1 guy. Not sure they go down that road but I would be looking into it. Different voice doesn't always equate success.
Guilt Trip
Well-known member
No.Bender said:
dappleganger
Active member
CarltonTheBear said:
When Tortorella was fired by Vancouver, 1 year into a 5-year/$10m contract, Columbus paid $750,000 of the $2m annual salary of what was left of the 5-year deal when they hired him with Vancouver paying the rest of the $2m.
"Portzline notes that Columbus has only had to pay $750,000 of Tortorella's annual $2 million salary as Vancouver has taken the rest of the hit. His next contract could very well be over $2 million a year and the Jackets will have to pay every cent of it."
https://www.tsn.ca/report-tortorella-jackets-in-contract-talks-1.782240
mr grieves
New member
I liked Keefe, but it was clear that whatever a coach needs to do to produce heroic playoff performances he didn't know how to do that. Quinn's my favorite Leafs coach (started posting here to object to the injustice of his firing) precisely because he could do that. Sheldon almost seems better suited to being an assistant.
Also: he's a year or two older than me, and when he started he looked it. He now looks 15 years older than me. Job aged him like it was the US presidency. Hope he takes some time to recover.
Also: he's a year or two older than me, and when he started he looked it. He now looks 15 years older than me. Job aged him like it was the US presidency. Hope he takes some time to recover.
Guilt Trip
Well-known member
Hell no. Great for the pressers but other then that, pass.Arn said:
dappleganger
Active member
herman said:
Maybe Keefe walks without the extension and the Leafs are looking for a new coach without a better option they like. The extension has no impact on the hockey side going forward. It's not really a big deal. If anything, it provided insurance if this season went better than it did.
bustaheims
Well-known member
Zee said:
I mean, that one is easy - didn't want him to be a lameduck coach this season. Two year is what it really take for that kind of status to disappear instead of just kicking the can a little down the road.
Jolly good show chaps
Member
bustaheims said:
Not wanting to nitpick here, but why not a one year extension, other than MLSE can afford to pay off two if necessary? A one year extension still gave two years to see how things panned out.
bustaheims
Well-known member
Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington said:
A one year extension is not a strong enough endorsement from management to really take away the lame duck status. It?s a clear signal that they?re considering moving on and that he?s on his last legs. A two year extension shows that, while management isn?t committing to him, they?re not at the point where letting him go is high on their list yet. It turned a one year deal into a three year deal. It may not seem like much to us, but there is a psychological difference.
azzurri63
Well-known member
Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate said:
Nothing to do with the coach. He doesn't have what it takes to play hard nosed playoff hockey. Nothing will change. See if we can unload him and move on. Listening to people who want to run it back or think things will miraculously change are incorrect. Time for a change folks.
Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington said:
It's a good question.
I didn't make the deal so I don't really know.
I haven't seen anything beyond speculation on it.
But here are two guesses:
They just lost Dubas messing around with an extension so maybe they were a little gun shy about trying to cut it too fine, as 1 year deal is not much of a commitment. The GM probably wanted Keefe around to help him get insight into the roster he was inheriting. Lots to do and not a lot of time to do it. So it helped provide Treliving some stability through that time.
The players have an appreciation for contract length from their own experiences. This was being done in part to help Keefe not be perceived as lame duck. Two years would likely be perceived as more of a reasonable commitment under the circumstances to tamp down the lame duck notions. We all know the Leafs could sign him for 5 years and afford to fire him the next day so there were practical limits.
azzurri63 said:
If Marner "doesn't have what it takes to play hard nosed playoff hockey", why does he lead the team in playoff scoring & ppg over 8 playoff seasons? And in playoff PP points? And he leads the Leafs in playoff short handed ice time (meaning he is getting less scoring ES & PP ice time than some). Marner also leads all the forwards and all but one Leaf in playoff +/- by a substantial margin.
Why aren't the 'studs' who "have what it takes to play hard nosed playoff hockey" leading in these areas?
If Marner is that bad, why did both Babcock and Keefe play him so much?
Why didn't they play the players who "have what it takes to play hard nosed playoff hockey" more?
Combined, those two coaches played Marner more than any other forward on the team.
Injuries are not an excuse because Marner led in TOI/game too.
When did these coaches get so stupid - season after season - 8 seasons in a row?
How come Leafs fans are so much smarter than those two NHL coaches and all their assistant coaches who had their jobs on the line - year after year?
They've been overseen by Lamoriello, Dubas, Treliving & Shanahan whose jobs are on the line. Why wouldn't they step in years ago and say something? Doesn't the team winning matter to them too?
The basic underlying statistical and circumstantial facts simply do not jive with what you are telling me.
It doesn't make sense. And yes, I watched the games and I did not see it either.
I do see that he hasn't got the greatest strong shot but it has decent accuracy. He's not going to physically flatten someone with a hard check. He's not going to fight anyone. He's not very good at faceoffs. He's not perfect. But he has a lot of good qualities and is applying them at an elite level in the NHL.
I have been trying to look at the advanced stats but some of their numbers did not tie out so I'm trying another site.
bustaheims
Well-known member
Marner - like a lot of the team - has been inconsistent in the playoffs. He's produced really well in 3 series - the two against Tampa and the first time he faced Boston (28 points in 20 games)- and hasn't produced so much in the rest (22 points in 37 games), with the two most recent series being his worst (6 points in 12 games).
That suggests to me that, other than Tampa (for whatever reason, the Leafs have Vasilevskiy figured out in the playoffs), teams have figured out how to minimize Marner's offensive impact in the playoffs. He still contributes with his strong defensive play most nights, but, he does seem to struggle to adapt to how other teams have adapted to him.
That suggests to me that, other than Tampa (for whatever reason, the Leafs have Vasilevskiy figured out in the playoffs), teams have figured out how to minimize Marner's offensive impact in the playoffs. He still contributes with his strong defensive play most nights, but, he does seem to struggle to adapt to how other teams have adapted to him.
herman
Well-known member
https://www.hockey-reference.com/players/m/marnemi01/gamelog/playoffs
There's no denying Marner is talented and he puts up points in the aggregate. Take a look at the context of those points though, much of it is front-loaded to the beginning of a series or admidst blow-outs and then tapers off to nothing as teams adjust and pinch him off and the pressure mounts. He and Matthews were attached at the hip once Keefe came on board (apparently at their behest) and it just made it even easier to neuter both star players because their offense was usually strung through Marner's play and his playstyle made it too easy to keep the puck to the perimeter and cause blue line turnovers.
Marner picked up points in the latest Tampa series mostly by throwing the puck on net through a crowd; one of his goals was a tap in from a gorgeous fake and feed from Nylander on the PP. Marner has since stopped putting pucks directly on net (rebounds ~20+% of playoff goals) or even trying to manufacture rush plays (which are like 50+% of the goals in the playoffs).
He likes to:
[*] slow the play down and scan for seams to exploit, moving around a bit to try to open lanes
[*] he plays conservatively in the playoffs to reduce the defensive risk
[*] but his conservative puck movement is stymied by bunching puck transition into set defenses with no speed
[*] his puck handling is exploitable, which means while he doesn't give up many chances in the aggregate, the ones he does give up are with Matthews deep in the OZ and it's an odd-man rush against
This is not to say Marner is unskilled and has terrible effort. On the contrary, he is extremely skilled and confident in his ability to find the seam and get his man a goal, and puts in a lot of effort to do so. I found with Keefe enabling the Marner/Matthews mix, the Leafs tended to aim for clean shots only, where someone gets a glorious look and puts it straight in the net. When the going gets tough, he puts a lot of additional pressure on himself to create and manufacture something, trying to do it all by holding the puck even longer, but it's still the same method of trying to thread something beautiful in a swamp of legs and sticks and torsoes.
Playoff hockey is a team sport that requires sacrifice, not just on defensive blocking, but also generating chances you probably won't get credit for, and when he's with Matthews, the Leafs don't do much of that, even when told they should.
https://twitter.com/NickDeSouza_/status/1788584551104524327
Let us also not forget how much each star player generates without another star player on their line
Matthews - no problem
Nylander - no problem
Tavares - he's not young anymore and not fast, but has a history of elevating linemates that mesh with him
Marner - has never really flown solo before until this series and looked like Kerfoot in this small sample
There's no denying Marner is talented and he puts up points in the aggregate. Take a look at the context of those points though, much of it is front-loaded to the beginning of a series or admidst blow-outs and then tapers off to nothing as teams adjust and pinch him off and the pressure mounts. He and Matthews were attached at the hip once Keefe came on board (apparently at their behest) and it just made it even easier to neuter both star players because their offense was usually strung through Marner's play and his playstyle made it too easy to keep the puck to the perimeter and cause blue line turnovers.
Marner picked up points in the latest Tampa series mostly by throwing the puck on net through a crowd; one of his goals was a tap in from a gorgeous fake and feed from Nylander on the PP. Marner has since stopped putting pucks directly on net (rebounds ~20+% of playoff goals) or even trying to manufacture rush plays (which are like 50+% of the goals in the playoffs).
He likes to:
[*] slow the play down and scan for seams to exploit, moving around a bit to try to open lanes
[*] he plays conservatively in the playoffs to reduce the defensive risk
[*] but his conservative puck movement is stymied by bunching puck transition into set defenses with no speed
[*] his puck handling is exploitable, which means while he doesn't give up many chances in the aggregate, the ones he does give up are with Matthews deep in the OZ and it's an odd-man rush against
This is not to say Marner is unskilled and has terrible effort. On the contrary, he is extremely skilled and confident in his ability to find the seam and get his man a goal, and puts in a lot of effort to do so. I found with Keefe enabling the Marner/Matthews mix, the Leafs tended to aim for clean shots only, where someone gets a glorious look and puts it straight in the net. When the going gets tough, he puts a lot of additional pressure on himself to create and manufacture something, trying to do it all by holding the puck even longer, but it's still the same method of trying to thread something beautiful in a swamp of legs and sticks and torsoes.
Playoff hockey is a team sport that requires sacrifice, not just on defensive blocking, but also generating chances you probably won't get credit for, and when he's with Matthews, the Leafs don't do much of that, even when told they should.
https://twitter.com/NickDeSouza_/status/1788584551104524327
Let us also not forget how much each star player generates without another star player on their line
Matthews - no problem
Nylander - no problem
Tavares - he's not young anymore and not fast, but has a history of elevating linemates that mesh with him
Marner - has never really flown solo before until this series and looked like Kerfoot in this small sample
herman said:
100% this. Keefe wasn't an idiot, he wanted them to score goals in certain ways that they just weren't keen to do. Marner loves the pretty play, and I get it, but you need those greasy garbage goals. The Panthers pumped Swayman that way. You need more bodies in front of the net willing to take punishment. Panarin just scored the winner yesterday by being in front and getting a tip. We haven't seen that enough here and I think a lot of it is Marner trying the pretty play and it backfiring on him.
Again, that's not to say he's a bad player, he's not, but the mix isn't right here and he's the one that makes the most sense to go since I really can't see him re-signing.