Bender said:
Man I was raging about that Holl interference call last night to some buddies. Leafs won that series.
The Core
- Thread starter hobarth
- Start date
Man I was raging about that Holl interference call last night to some buddies. Leafs won that series.
mr grieves
New member
To market we shall go?
Walkin? around money: one 100-point, Selke finalist right winger with 2 years left on deal.
Shopping list: two or (with salary dump?) three of ? a 20-23yo emerging top-6 forward (ideally C/RW) who can go to the net, has good hands and a decent 2-way game; a mid/late-20s defenseman who can move the puck; a team?s #2 prospect; a first round pick.
Store: a team that?s been rebuilding/retooling, is/getting impatient, has incentives to accelerate their move into the playoffs or contention.
Walkin? around money: one 100-point, Selke finalist right winger with 2 years left on deal.
Shopping list: two or (with salary dump?) three of ? a 20-23yo emerging top-6 forward (ideally C/RW) who can go to the net, has good hands and a decent 2-way game; a mid/late-20s defenseman who can move the puck; a team?s #2 prospect; a first round pick.
Store: a team that?s been rebuilding/retooling, is/getting impatient, has incentives to accelerate their move into the playoffs or contention.
mr grieves said:
The "store" kinda screams LA. Not sure they fit the exact shopping list you laid out but something around Kempe + Byfield/Kaliev + draft pick could make some sense.
dappleganger
Active member
A Byfield/Marner swap was the one that came to mind for me.
TO brings back the core, brings back the coach and GM, is there any reason to expect improvement or even be excited about the team.?
Seattle won a round of playoffs in their 2nd year, Vegas did even better in their first year, why can't TO at least match those teams. St.L. won a Cup recently with one superstar, beyond that they had 3 strong lines , a good d and an emerging(hot) goalie.
Pitts. won a Cup with probably one of the worst ds to win a Cup ever, Chicago won with Niemla as their goalie, it really does seem like TO is cursed.
SJ had probably one of the best teams perennially for like 15 years, they never won a Cup.
Seattle won a round of playoffs in their 2nd year, Vegas did even better in their first year, why can't TO at least match those teams. St.L. won a Cup recently with one superstar, beyond that they had 3 strong lines , a good d and an emerging(hot) goalie.
Pitts. won a Cup with probably one of the worst ds to win a Cup ever, Chicago won with Niemla as their goalie, it really does seem like TO is cursed.
SJ had probably one of the best teams perennially for like 15 years, they never won a Cup.
Guilt Trip
Active member
It depends what else is done to the team. And yes it would be exciting. This is a very good team. They have their warts. You have to keep going, whether you trade say a Marner or not. You gotta find the right chemistry. I still think the Leafs lack, besides a solid Muzz type, a solid top 6LW. Knies seems to be a fit there but we need another guy. Can it be JT if he moves to wing and then they need a Centre. Maybe it's Robertson. I don't know. The team still lacks secondary scoring. I hope they stop adding older guys to the bottom 6 and bring the kids up and let them play. I watched a lot of Marlies games this year and guys like Steeves, Abruzzese, McMann, Holmberg and SDA are knocking on the door. SDA is an interesting guy for me. I know he was injured this year but I don't know why he never got a longer look. This guy does everything at high speed. Great set of hands and improved a lot defensively from previous years.hobarth said:
Anyway to be successful you also need a lot of luck to win. Game 1 and 3 Matthews misses goals on the 1st shift by and inch. They go in, things change. Going to be an interesting off season, that's for sure.
Kin
New member
hobarth said:
That Chicago team probably had the single best collection of players in the entire cap era. Those Pittsburgh teams were led by maybe the single best 1-2 punch at C in the history of the game and had Phil Kessel on the 3rd line.
They didn't win with alchemy. They were better teams than the Leafs.
OldTimeHockey
Active member
hobarth said:
What are you trying to convince everyone of here? That sometimes the best team wins and sometimes they lose?
Kin
New member
OldTimeHockey said:
The argument being put forth is basically this:
The Maple Leafs have made the playoffs every year for the last 7 years. In some of those years they lost close series' to teams that were better than them or they were roughly as good as. In maybe two of those years they lost close series to teams they were better than. This cannot possibly be explained by the randomness of the playoffs along with some bad luck but rather by either a significant character deficiency on the part of a few select players on the team(which does not allow them to be like the players on more successful teams who never, ever have bad games in key moments) or some sort of curse brought on the team by an angry deity who feels the CN Tower reaches too far into the heavens and is a challenge to his omnipotence.
The answer, as prescribed, is to trade our good players for less good players. Step 2 is ??? and Step 3 is Stanley Cup Champions.
OldTimeHockey
Active member
Nik said:
Step 2 could be "add more truculence"
Highlander
Active member
And a good dose of Testosterone.OldTimeHockey said:
Nik said:
I mean we're not being paid to know what's out there in terms of trades or team construction, we're all just on a forum spitting out our thoughts on the team and whatever we think isn't relevant to how the team is run in the end.
Having said that, the road to a championship is bumpy and never paved smoothly and we've tried adding at the margins from the core and there has been little progress in the last seven years, rightly or wrongly, and having it go your way once in 7 years and saying it's going to happen eventually, let's keep running it back at some point is ludicrous given the hard cap.
How many teams have won with almost half the cap tied up in 4 forwards? I don't think it's that many, if any, when I think of the teams that have won since the cap era began. Washington and Pittsburgh had to do a lot of wheeling and dealing to get their cups and they didn't think too hard beyond keeping Sid, Malkin & Letang and Washington Ovechkin, Backstrom and Carlson.
Kin
New member
Bender said:
So I don't want us to just keep repeating the same conversation but, like, I get it. We have different concepts of progress. You see the last 7 years as all one continuous effort to succeed in the playoffs that has stalled out every year. I'm just never going to look at it that way. To me that's like flipping a coin and getting Heads three times in a row and thinking you need to change coins. The largely random results in short series of games, especially very close series of games, are not going to be my be all and end all of how I measure a team's growth. I've seen a team go from finishing with one of the worst records in the league in order to get Matthews to being a playoff team in their first season and then growing until now where, over the last three years, they've basically averaged the equivalent of 113 points over an 82 game season. To me, that genuinely does matter more in terms of meaningful, projectable growth than anything that can happen in one series.
And, conversely, if the Leafs had been sputtering along these past seven seasons but had fluked out a Montreal-esque run one year, I wouldn't be going "Hooray! Playoffs!". That's just not how I'm going to determine the sort of club they've built. I really do think the only thing you can really do in terms of success is build as good a team as possible and hope things break your way. Anything else is magical sort of weather controlling thinking.
Bender said:
The problem with that line of thought is that we all know who it is among the Leafs top 4 who, in terms of price to performance, is the one it makes the most sense to move and, quite frankly, it's not even close. But because the Leafs can't do that contractually it seems to me like what you're essentially saying is the equivalent of the Penguins saying "Well, we can't move on from Sergei Gonchar so we should probably trade Evgeni Malkin otherwise we're not doing much". You're advocating making bad moves because the good move isn't available.
OK, July 1 is rapidly approaching, the core has stated they want to remain Leafs so would it be a good idea or reasonable to allow the July 1 deadline to pass and not have signed Willie and Austin.
Why is July 1 so significant, after that date TO can't move Austin anywhere without his consent and Willie can name teams he won't accept a trade to, both will become Free Agents after next season and will be able to sign with any team. TO could lose both for nothing.
I think they need to put their signatures where their mouths are before July 1 or move them.
I also believe Mitch will have a NMC after July 1, so any trade involving him would have to be agreed to by him, not ideal but he's signed for 2 more years and he has roots in the TO community so his resigning seems far more likely.
Why is July 1 so significant, after that date TO can't move Austin anywhere without his consent and Willie can name teams he won't accept a trade to, both will become Free Agents after next season and will be able to sign with any team. TO could lose both for nothing.
I think they need to put their signatures where their mouths are before July 1 or move them.
I also believe Mitch will have a NMC after July 1, so any trade involving him would have to be agreed to by him, not ideal but he's signed for 2 more years and he has roots in the TO community so his resigning seems far more likely.
Guilt Trip
Active member
Can't sign before July 1st.hobarth said:
bustaheims
Active member
Guilt Trip said:
Also, in these cases, July 1st isn't a deadline, it's an opening.
Negotiating with UFAs can't happen until July 1 except they have some sort of grace period now, I'm sure players like Austin are essentially signed before July 1.
July 1 is an opening for future UFAs to think about where they want to play next and know that if they don't sign anywhere(except Winterpeg) in NHL can be their home.
July 1 is an opening for future UFAs to think about where they want to play next and know that if they don't sign anywhere(except Winterpeg) in NHL can be their home.
I watched the Carolina/Florida series, Necas the top scorer for Carolina this last year would be another great Leaf, he never went close to the opposition's net, basically protected himself thru these entire playoffs, interesting side note Noesen who was a Leaf last year and got into 1 game, 10 minutes, was a far better playoff player than Necas and had more points.