Series Talk: North Division Round 1: Leafs (1) vs. Canadiens (4) II

[Notsince67]

Marner is just in the wrong spot on the PP. All the teams are giving mitch and rielly all the space and covering matthews. Marner and rielly arent scoring threats from that far out. I would have mitch be where willy is behind the net feeding matthews/nylander/tavares. Nylander can take his spot and be a shooting threat and you can also have JT get more shots from the slot.

This will also force teams to not cheat so much to matthews.

IMO, the issue with the powerplay has been an absence of a credible shot at the point. The opposing defensemen will sit down low leaving little room for high danger penetration. Sandin will help address this issue on the first unit because his shot is decent. It will pry open the crease a bit. Muzzin would be good too except his skating is a bit slow if they need to rush back so leaving him as the lone dman would be a mistake.

 

[budzz]

Having Bogo back for start of game 1 is huge and a very pleasant surprise. That is the best dcore we could possibly dress IMO. LUV Sandins game this year, he can be a dynamic difference maker. And if the Habs want to get "tough and dirty" having Simmonds, Foligno, Bogo... even Hyms and Thornton, who's a big body, Nash.... nice mix. Hope the 2 Zachs can hit the ground running after some time off (rest?).

 

[stickty111]

Fixing the Maple Leafs Powerplay
IDK if people have seen this but interesting ideas by Han to fix the PP. The one and only positive about him leaving us is he has nice articles on team's systems from across the NHL.

 

[Jimmy Firecracker]

Absolutely delusional.

 

[Atomos2]

Obviously Mitch and Hyman are on the PP there so it's hard for them to also practice the PK, but I wonder if their PK time will drop now with a Foligno/Nash pair here now.

With Sandin overtaking Dermott, imo these are the best lines we could possibly put out.

 

[Peasy]

Fixing the Maple Leafs Powerplay
IDK if people have seen this but interesting ideas by Han to fix the PP. The one and only positive about him leaving us is he has nice articles on team's systems from across the NHL.

Yup they need way more movement. Just not enough options when Marner is on the right and Matthews is on the left. Everyone knows what the leafs are going to do with that set up... Really like the idea of having nylander and Marner rotate the half wall and down low. At times if nylander comes up on the half wall, that's an additional shooting threat.

Absolutely delusional.

And people say leaf fans go overboard about their players lol...

 

[PuckMagi]

I would definitely have Galchenyuk in over Thornton.

Also not really sure about having Nash as our #3 center. No idea how good he'll be... but my worry is that he's not up to speed having missed so much time and being thrown directly into a playoff game. I would have gone with Brooks or even Engvall.

 

[Golden_Jet]

5V5 lines with their Special Teams duties:

PP1 - PP1 - PP1
PK1 - PP2 - PP2
PK2 - PK1 - PK2
PP1 - PP2 - PP2

PP2 - PK2
PK1 - PK1
PP1 - PK2

Looks like kind of a perfect distribution of Special Teams duties with one spot each for each skater.

With the caveat that Hyman-Marner is likely PK3, which usually gets regular PK shifts as PK forwards change the most frequently.

Need more than one PK line, where is PK2 people.

 

[Advanced stats]

Need more than one PK line, where is PK2 people.

There's literally 4 pk2 markings?

 

[Racer88]

Excited and looking forward with much optimism for the playoffs but the PP units are a joke and I still don’t understand why whoever has been in charge of the PP on a team with this much firepower has not been fired yet

 

[zeke]

With Sandin overtaking Dermott, imo these are the best lines we could possibly put out.

I'm not sold on Galy and Engvall not being in our best 12 forwards, but Keefe might be right. We'll see.

 

[Atomos2]

I'm not sold on Galy and Engvall not being in our best 12 forwards, but Keefe might be right. We'll see.

I hope Keefe has the backbone to sit the veterans if they are underperforming because there are easy replacements. If Thornton, Simmonds or Nash are playing badly, they can and should be replaced. Hell even Mikheyev if he's not pulling his weight and is a detriment to the team.

 

[Menzinger]

 

[Golden_Jet]

Need more than one PK line, where is PK2 people.

There's literally 4 pk2 markings?

I meant the third and fourth forward, 2 forwards aren’t killing 2 minute

like the poster showed for the PP

my bad

 

[Gallagbi]

I meant the third and fourth forward, 2 forwards aren’t killing 2 minute

like the poster showed for the PP

my bad

There's a PK1 and PK2 unit shown, so 4 forwards with a note about PK3 in the text being for Marner/Hyman, no?

 

[Golden_Jet]

There's a PK1 and PK2 unit shown, so 4 forwards with a note about PK3 in the text being for Marner/Hyman, no?

ya
I guess I wasn’t clear enough on the “my bad” part of the quote, should of prefixed it with edit:

 

[Mitchy]

That PP will be stopped by the blueline alone.

Honestly, we might win a series or two, but we won't go far without PP. No one did that in history.

Well, if our PP continues to achieve a 6ish% success rate, we for sure aren't going all the way, but I did look into previous Cup winners, dating back to the 2009-2010 season and found that a few of them won despite their PP woes.
For instance, Bruins in 2011 won had the 14th ranked PP in the playoffs with a 11.4 PP%. Kings in 2012 had the 12th ranked PP with a 12.8% success rate. The Hawks in 2013 had the 13th ranked PP with a 11.4 PP%. More recently, the Blues won in 2019 with the 12th ranked PP, although there PP% wasn't completely horrendous at 16.3% (interestingly their PK% was terrible also at only 75.4%).

So, overall, teams with bad powerplays have won before, but the way our PP was operating the last while, it still has to improve a lot to match those teams' levels. With that said, if we can continue our dominant 5v5 play, and get our PP% to merely 15% or so, I think we'll do extremely well.

 

[cupcrazyman]

They should finish them off ASAP

 

[Fogelhund]

Once our PP gets on a roll again, it will be good enough.. problem is getting on a roll, and not waiting for that perfect moment to shoot.

 

[PromisedLand]

OMG is it thursday yet?

I got married, had kids, became a grandparent and the gameday is still not here.....

 

[Gabriel426]

Advise to our PP, just shoot the puck.

 

[Griffin76]

 

[SeaOfBlue]

Absolutely delusional.

Le Phoenix créera-t-il la bombe?

Mentioned this earlier. This is a translation so there may be something lost, but my goodness.

 

[Gallagbi]

Once our PP gets on a roll again, it will be good enough.. problem is getting on a roll, and not waiting for that perfect moment to shoot.

If anything it's felt like we've overshot recently to me.

 

[DarkKnight]