Wild @ Leafs - Nov. 12th, 7:00pm - SN

[CarltonTheBear]

	​
Minnesota Wild 13-3-4, 30 points​	@​	Toronto Maple Leafs 8-10-2, 18 points​

Projected Line-ups​

Kaprizov-Eriksson Ek-Boldy Trenin-Yurov-Shabanov Coleman-McCarron-Brink N. Foligno-Hartman-M. Foligno Hughes-Brodin Maatta-Spurgeon Kiersted-Bogosian Wallstedt​

Cowan-Matthews-Roslovic Tverberg-Tavares-Nylander McKenna-Paul-Joshua Duhaime-Blueger-MacEwen McCabe-Raddysh OEL-Stecher Mermis-Tanev Stolarz​

Scratches​

Nico Sturm David Spacek​

​

Cole McWard Morgan Rielly​

Injuries​

Brock Faber - Head - Injured Reserve Filip Gustavsson - Hip - Injured Reserve​

​

Zack MacEwen - Wrist - Probable Morgan Rielly - Lower Body - Out Colton Sissons - Lower Body - Injured Reserve Kirill Marchenko - Lower Body - Injured Reserve Nick Blankenburg - Upper Body - Injured Reserve Marshall Rifai - Lower Body - Injured Reserve Miles Wood - Undisclosed - Injured Reserve Elvis Merzlikins - Shoulder - Injured Reserve Max Domi - Back - Injured Reserve​

Game Notes​

MIN -Jesper Wallstedt will likely start for the Wild

TOR -Anthony Stolarz will likely start for the Leafs

Streams​

Sportsurge OnHockey NHL66​

 

[herman]

https://twitter.com/x/status/2120882884189749363

https://twitter.com/x/status/2120717160251007434

Some underlying signs things are pointing in the right direction structurally, but obviously being sewered with too many goals going in + one of the primary weapons not just firing blanks but playing like a sporadically disconnected controller is cratering the actual results that matter.

 

[Bill_Berg]

If only there were signs last year that Bob was washed up.

 

[rjd]

https://twitter.com/x/status/2120882884189749363

https://twitter.com/x/status/2120717160251007434

Some underlying signs things are pointing in the right direction structurally, but obviously being sewered with too many goals going in + one of the primary weapons not just firing blanks but playing like a sporadically disconnected controller is cratering the actual results that matter.

I read the thread a little further. They pointed out that the Vancouver game might also be skewing some of those results as well.

 

[rjd]

If only there were signs last year that Bob was washed up.

Maybe this means they may actually try Elvis when he gets healthy. That situation is also very weird.

 

[herman]

https://twitter.com/x/status/2120899582691315997

Let’s go Brendan!

 

[Kaberle15]

That is it, we may never win again...

Go Leafs Go!!!

 

[herman]

https://twitter.com/x/status/2120908834625515836

I'm Kombucha meme to this, because I do want to see more of what McWard can do

 

[herman]

I read the thread a little further. They pointed out that the Vancouver game might also be skewing some of those results as well.

How does Toronto get assigned to the Pacific division? asking for a friend

 

[rjd]

How does Toronto get assigned to the Pacific division? asking for a friend

Should be easier now that there isn't daylight savings time out there.

That would be a totally cool but implausible way of organizing the league.

What if every year you broke the divisions into how good the team was?

So division 1 is the top 8 teams in the league, division 2 is 9 to 16, division 3 is 17 to 24, and division 4 is 25 to 32.

You could weight the divisions so that the top 6 get into the playoffs from division 1, the top 5 from division 2, the top 4 from division 3 and the top team from division 4. Then the next season you are in a different division based on your standings. It would just add insult to injury if you were always in division 4

 

[Bill_Berg]

https://twitter.com/x/status/2120908834625515836

I'm Kombucha meme to this, because I do want to see more of what McWard can do

I don't like it.

 

[Redleaf]

I don't like it.

It’s almost like they’re saving him up for the playoff run that ultimately never comes .

 

[YYZ]

It’s almost like they’re saving him up for the playoff run that ultimately never comes .

Or a trade.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

I don't like it.

It's tough to really know what's going on here. If Tanev is "healthy" but playing through general soreness or something, then I get the days off. If he's healthy and generally feeling as good as a 36-year old Tanev can feel then giving him the game off tonight is pretty odd. I get maybe back to backs, but not really this one.

With that said the elephant in the room here is that Tanev hasn't been very good this season. He has the worst CF% and xGF% on the team among defencemen. And in the games since he returned from his injury in October he's the only defenceman getting heavily outshot/outchanced at 5-on-5.

 

[rjd]

It's tough to really know what's going on here. If Tanev is "healthy" but playing through general soreness or something, then I get the days off. If he's healthy and generally feeling as good as a 36-year old Tanev can feel then giving him the game off tonight is pretty odd. I get maybe back to backs, but not really this one.

With that said the elephant in the room here is that Tanev hasn't been very good this season. He has the worst CF% and xGF% on the team among defencemen. And in the games since he returned from his injury in October he's the only defenceman getting heavily outshot/outchanced at 5-on-5.

He's not playing the way he used to. He isn't blocking as many shots, and he's not taking the hit to make the play the way he used to. Something probably isn't right, but if it isn't right, then shut him down. The yo-yo approach isn't going to be good for anyone.

 

[dappleganger]

It's tough to really know what's going on here. If Tanev is "healthy" but playing through general soreness or something, then I get the days off. If he's healthy and generally feeling as good as a 36-year old Tanev can feel then giving him the game off tonight is pretty odd. I get maybe back to backs, but not really this one.

With that said the elephant in the room here is that Tanev hasn't been very good this season. He has the worst CF% and xGF% on the team among defencemen. And in the games since he returned from his injury in October he's the only defenceman getting heavily outshot/outchanced at 5-on-5.

Bingo!

It's a nice way of saying he's not playing without saying the truth, it's because he's not playing well.

Not sure if it will light a fire under him or not. If Tanev is washed it's gonna be long season for the Leafs.

 

[Chris]

Kind of looks like he's trying to avoid contact as much as possible (understandable given the injuries he's suffered from seemingly innocuous hits) which leads to rushing passes, giveaways, etc. I don't know if there's a way to fix that.

Stolarz appears to be starting tonight? If he has a good game and especially if the Leafs find a way to win, I think he should start against Edmonton as well. It's time to play the better goalie some more and hope that he holds up. If Bob is a "real gud pro" he'll understand.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

Something jumped out at me looking at Tanev's stats this season. His CF is 41.28%, which is by far the lowest of his NHL career. Breaking it down his CA/60 is 58.07, which is not great but not exactly shockingly high. Raddysh, McCabe, and Rielly are all allowing slightly more shot attempts against so far this season.

What's crushing him is his CF/60 of 40.82.

Not only would this be by far the lowest on-ice shot attempts for rate of his career, it's by far the lowest rate of any Leafs defencemen to play at least 100+ minutes in a season since these stats started being tracked in the 07/08 season. The closest comparable I could find was Andrew MacWilliam's 42.62 CF/60 when he played 12 games for us in the 14/15 season and those were the only games he played in his NHL career. The closest an actual NHL defenceman has come to that was Liljegren's first season in the NHL when he played 11 games in 19/20 and his rate was 44.96. For some context generally speaking Leafs defencemen were in the 50's on the low end and in the 60's in the high end. This season league wide of the 210 defencemen to play 100+ 5-on-5 minutes Tanev ranks 205th in CF/60.

This is made all the more worse when you factor in the that the 4 forwards he's shared the ice most at 5-on-5 this season have been: Nylander, Paul, McKenna, and Matthews. His defence obviously hasn't been near his standards this season but what's really hurting the team is how, for whatever reason, he's strangling our own offence in ways that we've basically never seen before.

 

[herman]

This is made all the more worse when you factor in the that the 4 forwards he's shared the ice most at 5-on-5 this season have been: Nylander, Paul, McKenna, and Matthews. His defence obviously hasn't been near his standards this season but what's really hurting the team is how, for whatever reason, he's strangling our own offence in ways that we've basically never seen before.

Going to have to go to the video for a longer look at his puck touches, but I suspect he's not hitting that first pass as cleanly and as often as before.

The Matthews line is largely insulated from this breakdown in breakouts because Matthews is a Selke-worthy C that digs pucks out and has two of our speediest wings to take the puck up and out. Similar with Blueger's line.

Nylander used to be able to solo that for Tavares, but since his illness looks like he has both lower back pain and plantar fasciitis and the lung capacity of a cigar afficionado. Trying to use his linemates to transport is basically an auto-Tavares turnover at the opposing blueline 1v3. I can see him clearly saving gas for offense, puck watching and waiting instead of puck getting.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

Going to have to go to the video for a longer look at his puck touches, but I suspect he's not hitting that first pass as cleanly and as often as before.

The Matthews line is largely insulated from this breakdown in breakouts because Matthews is a Selke-worthy C that digs pucks out and has two of our speediest wings to take the puck up and out. Similar with Blueger's line.

Nylander used to be able to solo that for Tavares, but since his illness looks like he has both lower back pain and plantar fasciitis and the lung capacity of a cigar afficionado. Trying to use his linemates to transport is basically an auto-Tavares turnover at the opposing blueline 1v3. I can see him clearly saving gas for offense, puck watching and waiting instead of puck getting.

Good observation. Matthews (and Roslovic) are basically the only forwards who aren't being completely dragged down in terms of shot attempts for when they're on the ice with Tanev. With the obvious caveat that 10 games for Tanev is a small enough sample size to begin with so breaking it down even further per teammates might not be super reliable, but so far that checks out.