Speculation: Jets vs Leafs: why were there 2 different results?

[Dayofthedogs]

If Babcock is such a great coach why did Toronto finish dead last by a mile last year? You'd think a guy that gets constantly gets called the best in the league would have been able to do a lot more even with the group he had.....

Roster has way more to do with success than coaching in this day and age. Being the most injured team in the league and nearly league worst goaltending constantly get brushed under the rug with the hate on for PoMo

Injuries
Schedule
Goaltending
Special teams
Division
Travel

In that order.

 

[kxx]

Even Leafs goaltending hasn't always been amazing at times but they still won games. But yeah has been better than ours.

Injuries (October through March 25th 2017)
Winnipeg

Toronto

Yeah its bad. Little being out as long as he was early on was not good and Toronto didn't have anything like that to deal with. (I'd say it would be like Kadri being out for 20+ games earlier in the season). Toronto's d core is worse than ours so I don't think its as the convenient excuse we'd like to see it as but its there.

Chart doesn't include Trouba's holdout but at that point we still had Myers so wasn't as bad as it could have been.

If you've watched Leafs games - the team is organized and has strategies that actually work consistently to generate scoring opportunities and the right players to do it. It's not luck - thats something thats being worked on and as such can be repeated and is repeatedly effective. Yeah having guys like Matthews and Marner is pretty damn helpful but its amazing how things just click there.

The Jets it honestly seems like a different story every night - most of our goals come from just pure determination and talent and opportunities to use that aren't always available so we never know what we're going to get each night. Yeah that happens with every time but most of our goals come in unrepeatable type scenarios. Toronto is remarkably consistent even in losses.

To be fair Toronto looked pretty awful last year though at times - things were getting better for sure but it could but it could be without the flood of young talent this year they would have looked more like that team (and the injury laden Jets) then the playoff bound squad we're seeing today.

 

[raideralex99]

Weird Maurice uses rookies as an excuse and Babcock teachs rookies how to play ... see the difference.

 

[Hunter368]

Weird Maurice uses rookies as an excuse and Babcock teachs rookies how to play ... see the difference.

Chevy & Pmo use the same excuse.

 

[Dayofthedogs]

Did Babcock forget to teach his players how to play last season?

 

[ps241]

If Babcock is such a great coach why did Toronto finish dead last by a mile last year? You'd think a guy that gets constantly gets called the best in the league would have been able to do a lot more even with the group he had.....

Roster has way more to do with success than coaching in this day and age. Being the most injured team in the league and nearly league worst goaltending constantly get brushed under the rug with the hate on for PoMo

Injuries
Schedule
Goaltending
Special teams
Division
Travel

In that order.

Well lets see.

Management were in full rebuild mode last season (tanking) not partial rebuild.

They were crushed by injuries which aided the tank.

No Marner, Nylander, Matthews, Anderson, so pretty much most of their top scorers this year.

Even then I commented that despite the total lack of talent and the tank Babcock had a ****** team playing very hard all season or at least that is what my eye test saw.

If you are ignoring the coaching talent gap between Toronto and Winnipeg you are missing a big piece of the puzzle IMO. I think Maurice falls into the average coach category and I think Babcock is in the elite category.

 

[surixon]

Umm, do you remember where he played and how that kind of culture rubs off on all?

If you are defending the local boys, please enlighten us on what kind of NHL winning influence they have had?

Chevy has won multiple AHL championships as a GM and was with the Blackhawks as an assistant GM during one of their Cup wins. He has a proven track record of winning at the management level.

Forgive me if I don't subscribe to the well he was a player on a great team so he must know how to win at the executive level BS that gets thrown out around here way too much. Two completely different things. Having said that I like what their management group is doing for the most part, but they haven't won anything and may never win anything. But it makes things a bit easier when you can throw 5 million at an elite coach and luck out with regards to injuries.

 

[JBM]

Weird Maurice uses rookies as an excuse and Babcock teachs rookies how to play ... see the difference.

Yes exactly. Drives me crazy that youth is always our excuse to fall back on.
The way our salary cap works you gotta take advantage of players when they're on the elc.
Look at Chicago they do it perfectly.
I hate how youth is our excuse but is really an advantage, as we can have so many high quality players still on their entry level contracts.
If Chevy sits on his hands this summer I'll lose my mind. This is our window, make the nesscessary moves and take advantage of our situation now.

 

[kittiecarlyle]

Coach and Goaltender. simplified answer. Jets are close to at least being in the Leaf's situation imo.

 

[YWGinYYZ]

Thought we could engage in some intelligent discussion and hoping to avoid the same-old, same-old comments.

Taking a look at the Leafs vs the Jets and the number of rookies on each team, I'm wondering how the Leafs had greater success compared to the Jets.

(...)

I'm quoting the OP to remind everyone of the thread topic.

Let's try to stay on topic, and avoid rehashing the points made in the (literally) multi-thousands of posts the mega-threads had, yes? Read and follow the topic laid out in the original post, pretty please?

 

[surixon]

Weird Maurice uses rookies as an excuse and Babcock teachs rookies how to play ... see the difference.

I seem to recall Babcock making plenty of excuses earlier in the year when the Leafs where losing.

Anyhow management needs to bring in a special teams coaching guru and give him full autonomy to do whatever he wants with both units. It's essentially the major difference between how each team is coached.

 

[Saintb]

Did Babcock forget to teach his players how to play last season?

I think they wanted Mathews badly..

 

[Mortimer Snerd]

Injuries (massive difference)

Management: fixed their goaltending (Huge difference)

special teams (leafs have the #2 ranked PP and the 8th ranked PK)

coaching (see special teams)


Babcock has done a masterful job with a team that is younger than the Jets. Credit to the GM for also fixing the net on what Winnipeg would call a throw away season??

Injuries certainly look like they should have been a massive difference. But then, why were we no better in the period between our F's getting back and all our D getting injured? Why have we been better with our AHL D corps? It certainly isn't because right side Chiarot is better than Trouba. It appears to me that knowing our D was seriously bad the whole team decided to start 'playing the right way'. So why had they not been doing that all year? That smells of coaching to me and brings the injury excuse into question.

Yes our goaltending was bad but see 'playing the right way' above. When we started getting tighter team D our goalies got better.

"special teams (leafs have the #2 ranked PP and the 8th ranked PK)

coaching (see special teams)"

Player deployment and usage - coaching. Even allowing some decisions that appeared bad to us may have been about teaching the young players there have been plenty of others that are just plain inexplicable. I give you Dano in the PB recently instead of Thor.

Why haven't some other options been tried now, in garbage time when it wouldn't matter if they didn't work out? This was the time to try:
Dano - Petan - Armia 3rd line
Copp - Lowry - Tanev 4th line
Re-unite ESL. See if they still have a spark.
Laine on PP1 - on the left ******* side fer **** sake!

 

[Dayofthedogs]

Well lets see.

Management were in full rebuild mode last season (tanking) not partial rebuild.

They were crushed by injuries which aided the tank.

No Marner, Nylander, Matthews, Anderson, so pretty much most of their top scorers this year.

Even then I commented that despite the total lack of talent and the tank Babcock had a ****** team playing very hard all season or at least that is what my eye test saw.

If you are ignoring the coaching talent gap between Toronto and Winnipeg you are missing a big piece of the puzzle IMO. I think Maurice falls into the average coach category and I think Babcock is in the elite category.

I'm coaching is a piece. But the size of that piece I think is up for a tremendous amount of debate.

You kind of proved my point with your reply. All the young guys in their rosters this year was a big upgrade from the roster they had last season. Babcock's good but even he couldn't do anything with the team he had last year.... If coaching is paramount to success why is that?

The comment about babs having his team play "hard" is kinda silly. Wouldn't we eviscerate PoMo if we finished last this year and played hard?

Loosing the the players we did this year combined with the rediculous schedule had to have had an enormous impact on this team. Goaltending follows that and then special teams. Despite the special teams grumbles the PP has been effective since mid December while the PK is still bad.....

 

[Mortimer Snerd]

Babcock being a top coach is a big one. Leafs are getting the most out of Bozak and Kadri. Before the season we would have said Little is way better than both but this year it's been pretty even. Not to mention their PP is one of the best when ours should be one of the best but wasn't.

Injuries definitely slowed us a bit but our record has been pretty consistent with or without them.

Andersen has been better than Hellebuyck when before the year moat of us figured they'd be about even. And behind a worse D on paper.

No reason we can't be right back to neck and neck with them next year. But if we are still lagging well behind next year, heads will have to roll. Time has come for us to be paying more attention to putting together a cohesive team and not just a collection of players.

Yup.

Another point - Their starting goaltending was good but their backup was terrible. Did they go through the season that way and miss the play=offs? No. They picked up McIlhenney. Maybe not the greatest goalie around but he has given them .919 in 11 games. So they were not forced to play Anderson in 17 straight because they were terrified of their backup. He was equally available to us. He gets paid peanuts and is done at the end of this year. No ongoing obligation. But we are in a development year and didn't need to try. Or some such thing.

 

[Dayofthedogs]

Injuries certainly look like they should have been a massive difference. But then, why were we no better in the period between our F's getting back and all our D getting injured? Why have we been better with our AHL D corps? It certainly isn't because right side Chiarot is better than Trouba. It appears to me that knowing our D was seriously bad the whole team decided to start 'playing the right way'. So why had they not been doing that all year? That smells of coaching to me and brings the injury excuse into question.

Yes our goaltending was bad but see 'playing the right way' above. When we started getting tighter team D our goalies got better.

"special teams (leafs have the #2 ranked PP and the 8th ranked PK)

coaching (see special teams)"

Player deployment and usage - coaching. Even allowing some decisions that appeared bad to us may have been about teaching the young players there have been plenty of others that are just plain inexplicable. I give you Dano in the PB recently instead of Thor.

Why haven't some other options been tried now, in garbage time when it wouldn't matter if they didn't work out? This was the time to try:
Dano - Petan - Armia 3rd line
Copp - Lowry - Tanev 4th line
Re-unite ESL. See if they still have a spark.
Laine on PP1 - on the left ******* side fer **** sake!

Well we have been better since we got healthy and had time to practice. Aren't we 11-6-3 in our last 20?

Not to mention that our players who came back from injury were clearly still playing hurt like MP. We have more than enough numbers to tell us the difference of impact between the guys we were using when we were hurt.

Perhaps we are "playing" the right way now because the things PoMo has been stressing and teaching all season have started to come to fruition.

Oh, it appears Laine is playing the left side of PP1 now so.... I have more faith in PoMo running the PP than the posters here who had some terrible analysis of our players..... Like, Wheeler isn't good on the PP and Buff hates Laine, Lowry has no business there.... so on and so forth

 

[surixon]

Injuries certainly look like they should have been a massive difference. But then, why were we no better in the period between our F's getting back and all our D getting injured? Why have we been better with our AHL D corps? It certainly isn't because right side Chiarot is better than Trouba. It appears to me that knowing our D was seriously bad the whole team decided to start 'playing the right way'. So why had they not been doing that all year? That smells of coaching to me and brings the injury excuse into question.

Yes our goaltending was bad but see 'playing the right way' above. When we started getting tighter team D our goalies got better.

"special teams (leafs have the #2 ranked PP and the 8th ranked PK)

coaching (see special teams)"

Player deployment and usage - coaching. Even allowing some decisions that appeared bad to us may have been about teaching the young players there have been plenty of others that are just plain inexplicable. I give you Dano in the PB recently instead of Thor.

Why haven't some other options been tried now, in garbage time when it wouldn't matter if they didn't work out? This was the time to try:
Dano - Petan - Armia 3rd line
Copp - Lowry - Tanev 4th line
Re-unite ESL. See if they still have a spark.
Laine on PP1 - on the left ******* side fer **** sake!

I don't believe the Jets have been any better lately at ES with their depleted defense. The teams possesion stats are unsurprisingly worse during this stretch 47% CF.

What has happened is:
we are getting much better goaltending (we are hovering around league average for the last 10 or so games)

Our PP is clicking at 23.5% which puts us top 10 in the league over that period.

Our PK has also been somewhat respectable sitting 20th in the league at 79%

Puts both units over the cummulative 100% barrier.

Essentially what this stretch has shown is what everyone has known for a long time. This team will win a lot of games with average goaltending and special teams.

Hopefully the team is ready to carry over the special teams performance I to next season while returning to a dominant 5 on 5 possesion games that has been a staple under Moe other than this season.

Chevy needs to go out and solve goaltending though.

 

[Channelcat]

I think our regression started when Maurice changed his glasses. Babcock doesn't wear glasses at all. Weird.

 

[pictman]

1-schedule- The timing of our record setting schedule was nasty.A young team trying to figure things out faced an extreme lack of practice time.We don't have a team sitting across the river to travel to.This has been underestimated by alot of people.It put us behind the preverbable 8 ball right off the bat.
2-Missed games (injuries)Starting with Trouba,Little,Myers.....and on it was just to much.You just can't miss that many many games to key people.

3-A big mistake by Chevy in goal.We needed help.They should have risked sending down Hutch and bring in a proven tender.

4- coaching I'm just not sure.Personaly I put him on a short leash next year.

 

[Pongs21]

On top of what everyone has already stated, our defensive depth or lack there of was really exposed. Management took a gamble on goaltending and ended up with more negative than positive results. At this point I'm OK with Maurice staying one more year, but not without exceptions... He needs to implement systems that are relevant to today's modern game, more possession, less dump and chase, as well as a complete overhaul on the assistants, especially Huddy and Flaherty they need to go. Maurice and Chevy should both be on the hot seat. If this team doesn't make the playoffs next year, somthing is horribly wrong.
With regards to recent better play - I'm sure half of the roster, if not more, are playing for a spot on this team next year, as well as a spot on that protected list.
The difference between the Jets and Leafs are coaching, injuries, goaltending, luck, schedule and multiple career years to go along with their young super trio. Kudos to them and I look forward to watching them in the playoffs and going back to hating them next year.

 

[Guffman]

Looking at special teams (PP, PK and short-handed goals), Toronto is +15, Winnipeg is -15. That's a 30 goal swing. Add that to Winnipeg's goal differential and we go from -12 to +18. Teams at +18 are playoff teams.

If you just take a look at special teams, that's a make or break on our respective positioning.

Why are we bad at special teams? Probably a lot of reasons (goaltending, coaching, youth, injuries).

 

[Board Bard]

Chevy has won multiple AHL championships as a GM and was with the Blackhawks as an assistant GM during one of their Cup wins. He has a proven track record of winning at the management level.

Forgive me if I don't subscribe to the well he was a player on a great team so he must know how to win at the executive level BS that gets thrown out around here way too much. Two completely different things. Having said that I like what their management group is doing for the most part, but they haven't won anything and may never win anything. But it makes things a bit easier when you can throw 5 million at an elite coach and luck out with regards to injuries.

I don't think Chevy did anything with Chicago that his boss didn't tell him to do (and probably did it slowly), and I doubt Chevy made any important decisions there that guided them to any success. As for his AHL record, you said it yourself in your second paragraph: Two completely different things. Doing well in the AHL is no guarantee it's going to be repeated in the NHL, just as it isn't for, say, goalies. I'd say that so far the indications are that Chevy is not likely to repeat his AHL record. I don't think he's a broad enough thinker to manage a team at this level, not to mention his terrible evaluation skills and mind-numbing dithering. Shanahan, on the other hand, while having no real NHL management experience, is showing indications that he not only might have the broad thinking necessary, but also the willingness to act decisively in pursuit of improvement. Plus he's got Lou Lamoriello. Who does Chevy have? Zinger? Chipman? Maurice? All of them are laughable comparisons. The Jets might have some really good players, but everything else is minor league.

 

[Mortimer Snerd]

If Babcock is such a great coach why did Toronto finish dead last by a mile last year? You'd think a guy that gets constantly gets called the best in the league would have been able to do a lot more even with the group he had.....

Roster has way more to do with success than coaching in this day and age. Being the most injured team in the league and nearly league worst goaltending constantly get brushed under the rug with the hate on for PoMo

Injuries
Schedule
Goaltending
Special teams
Division
Travel

In that order.

The injuries excuse the place in the standings. OK, that's done. Now lets put it behind us.

Lets just look at the way the Jets play and leave the final result out of it.

Why are we the most or 2nd most penalized team - again? Why does that seem to be a characteristic of Maurice coaching?

Why are our ST terrible - again? Could coaching have anything to do with that?

Why are our lights out in the AHL goalies so bad in the NHL? Is it possible coaching is playing a part there? Do defensive breakdowns in front of the goalies play no part? There were a **ll of a lot of them!

There are too many player usage questions to list.

If the team played up to the ability of the players we were making do with while injured or played well but with rookie mistakes we would look like a well coached team that just couldn't win with what they had. That was not the case.

They have played the last 4 games without Myers, Enstom, Postma and Chiarot. We have had Stu, Melchiori and Nogier playing regular shifts and we have played some of our best hockey of the season. Why is that?

 

[surixon]

I don't think Chevy did anything with Chicago that his boss didn't tell him to do (and probably did it slowly), and I doubt Chevy made any important decisions there that guided them to any success. As for his AHL record, you said it yourself in your second paragraph: Two completely different things. Doing well in the AHL is no guarantee it's going to be repeated in the NHL, just as it isn't for, say, goalies. I'd say that so far the indications are that Chevy is not likely to repeat his AHL record. I don't think he's a broad enough thinker to manage a team at this level, not to mention his terrible evaluation skills and mind-numbing dithering. Shanahan, on the other hand, while having no real NHL management experience, is showing indications that he not only might have the broad thinking necessary, but also the willingness to act decisively in pursuit of improvement. Plus he's got Lou Lamoriello. Who does Chevy have? Zinger? Chipman? Maurice? All of them are laughable comparisons. The Jets might have some really good players, but everything else is minor league.

We will just have to see how things play out. Shanahan is also in a market that has infinite resources to go out and act decisively with regards to getting coaches of Babcock's calibre and executives like Lou.

I was pointing out that Chevy has been a part of many winning organizations. Sure he may not replicate it at the NHL level but I question your notion that he can't evaluate. He's brought in and retained good scouts and has acquired a lot of good talent. He's also been good with his contracts other than the few notable exceptions.

 

[Mortimer Snerd]

I'm coaching is a piece. But the size of that piece I think is up for a tremendous amount of debate.

You kind of proved my point with your reply. All the young guys in their rosters this year was a big upgrade from the roster they had last season. Babcock's good but even he couldn't do anything with the team he had last year.... If coaching is paramount to success why is that?

The comment about babs having his team play "hard" is kinda silly. Wouldn't we eviscerate PoMo if we finished last this year and played hard?

Loosing the the players we did this year combined with the rediculous schedule had to have had an enormous impact on this team. Goaltending follows that and then special teams. Despite the special teams grumbles the PP has been effective since mid December while the PK is still bad.....

Like coaching the extent of that effect is somewhat debatable. I will concede that both had significant impact. We seem to quite often forget about the schedule. Between that and the @#$%^&* World Cup our coaching was pretty badly hampered all season. That is why I am trying to accept, as optimistically as possible the fact that our coaching is let off the hook this year and will be back next year.

There are still a lot of coaching specific complaints that have nothing to do with injuries or schedule. Things that have been consistent since Maurice's arrival. Next year we will see what the relative weights of these various things are on the bottom line. Lets see what Maurice can do with a better schedule, less injuries and a more experienced roster.

If it is another lost year I want some heads to roll.