Line Combos: Poor Morgan Reilly. A great player without a partner

[The Iceman]

There are lots of conversations about backup goalies and 4th line shuffles.

If the Leafs do not sign Hainsey who will play top RHD minutes with Reilly?
This is by far our biggest hole IMO and this needs to be filled either by trade

or

UFA signing and a series of moves to provide cap space.

Karlsson, Myers, Edler, Stralman all RHD UFAs but how would we squeeze them in?

A team without a solid 1st D pairing is in trouble.

Click to read more...

 

[Spirit of 67]

It's a top priority for Duby this summer.
Behind getting Marner done in my mind.

 

[Prominence]

The current sentiment on stralman is that he has declined quite a bit. He is an undersized defense man. His value may be at an all-time low.

Dubas could exploit the situation to have Babcock play muzzin with rielly on the top pair. The only problem then is the 2nd pair where zaitsev needs a partner. Moving Rosen up is risky because he has not proven to be a consistent performer and we cannot expect liljegren and sandin to be ready next year (it would be nice, but they should marinate).

 

[Joedoggy]

More "drama" to come....This should be the most dramatic years in Leaf history

 

[Once]

I think Edler re-ups with Vancouver. I'd try for Myers, but I see some 'Peg fans are regularly frustrated with him.

 

[Gabriel426]

I guess Reilly is the modern day Sundin. Let’s see if Dubas can actually net him a partner.

 

[Mr Hockey]

I don't think it's a huge issue to get Rielly an elite partner, his line is usually playing in the Ozone, he had 70 pts last season. If Babcock wants to play him 26-28 mins a game, then I would get him a stud of a partner, to help with the workload

 

[Trapper]

I don't think it's a huge issue to get Rielly an elite partner, his line is usually playing in the Ozone, he had 70 pts last season. If Babcock wants to play him 26-28 mins a game, then I would get him a stud of a partner, to help with the workload

McAvoy is playing 24 minutes/night for Boston. Slavin/Faulk/Pesce all top ice time getters for Carolina.
St. Louis and SJ, 24 minutes.

There isn’t a playoff team left that doesn’t ride the top 2/3 D the most.
It’s vital we obtain that 3rd D to go with Rielly/Muzzin.
That is more valuable than Kadri/Nylander/Kapanen IMO.

 

[Randy Randerson]

Honestly I think Dermott is going to be the answer here, they've looked good as a pairing and Dermott seems much more comfortable on his off side than any other LHD we have. For some reason (probably his injury and injury-affected playoffs, maybe some overshadowing by Sandin/Liljegren's performance) we seem to be sleeping on Dermott, but he is still profiling as a very likely top pairing dman based on his NHL results. Tougher competition will hurt his results some, but they are so good that they can absorb a big decline and still be really good.

If Muzzin-Zaitsev holds up as a 2nd pairing, I'm not worried about the top 4 next year. The bottom pairing might be a little more rickety, surprised we let Oz walk

 

[Mr Hockey]

IMO ... I would prefer our #3 best d'man to play with #2-Muzzin on the 2nd pairing and our #4 d'man to play with Rielly.

 

[Randy Randerson]

You are fixating too much on "trashing" thing. And I am not. I am just expressing concern over players ability to be a number one dman. And I am not the only one. May be only one on this board, though. It's easy to fall in love with 70 points dman. Tomas Kaberle got 68 points in 05-06. Was he number one? Could you win a cup with him as number one? I don't think so. Number 3 or 4? May be. That is what I am trying to say.

honestly, go through the list of cup winning teams and see if you can find one that has a Rielly/Kaberle level player as their 3rd or 4th best dman, maybe that's your misconception here but that does not exist.

 

[jaric1862]

I feel like they will sign Marner to a 3 year and will be able to squeeze a guy like Braun in for draft picks. The next 3 years will be all in

 

[Cappuccino]

I think Edler re-ups with Vancouver. I'd try for Myers, but I see some 'Peg fans are regularly frustrated with him.

I def. see some team throwing 5 or 6M at Myers.

San Jose might need to get rid of Braun (not a first pairing D), Calgary may want to trade Brodie, the Avs may want to trade Barrie (1 year left, might want a huge raise after that year) or EJ.

 

[Rielly4]

As people have stated, Rielly will likely be logging 24-26 minutes some games...We need his partner to be able to log big minutes, play good defense and move the puck steadily.

Dermott is very talented and is a solid two way d man. He is definitely ready for top 4 duty next season when he returns from injury. However i do not think that Dermott is ready to play top pair and log those kind of minutes...Muzzin could probably do it but i dont think Babcock wants to play Muzzin or Rielly on their off side...Dermott is ready to play off side on the 2nd pairing.

right now its:
Rielly-???
Muzzin-Zaitsev
Rosen-Dermott


Dermott can easily be pushed up into Zaitsevs spot but Zaitsev cannot easily be pushed up into the top pairng role with Rielly...He just isnt good enough. This leads me to believe that getting rid of Zaitsev is something we could afford to do. Clearing his cap space to give us room to add that top pairing D man its absolutely essential. AJ/KAP+Zaitsev+Brown will be going and we will need to be adding that top pairing D. The salary works out, we just need to find the right trading partner.

 

[Randy Randerson]

I heard just yesterday nhl player talk about Reilly. His opinion is much more important to me, than anonymous poll, sorry. And Reilly is just a player. Since when criticizing players equals to bashing a team??? Team lost to an arch-rival for second time. Something is wrong with teams core players. It's evident.

we lost to a good team, one that was handicapped as being better than us, and the element of luck/chance/random outcome is heavy in absolutely every element of our lives. If that series is replayed 100 times, we probably win 45.

I didn't mention bashing, I said that your opinion was in line with a tiny contingent of posters that (very obviously) let their dislike for the Leafs influence their opinion of our players, and out of line with 97 and change people out of 100.

It seems maybe that you heard one outlier opinion from someone who happened to be in the league and based yours entirely on that.

 

[The Iceman]

I think Edler re-ups with Vancouver. I'd try for Myers, but I see some 'Peg fans are regularly frustrated with him.

I think Myers is the RHD version of Gardiner as far as fans are concerened. Great size, solid offensive instincts, can log lots of minutes but it is what he doesn't do that bothers fans. Big but doesn't play mean is a common scouting report.

Like Gardiner who has his flaws you don't know what you have lost until it is gone but Myers would check a lot of boxes for our team.

 

[Once]

I think Myers is the RHD version of Gardiner as far as fans are concerened. Great size, solid offensive instincts, can log lots of minutes but it is what he doesn't do that bothers fans. Big but doesn't play mean is a common scouting report.

Like Gardiner who has his flaws you don't know what you have lost until it is gone but Myers would check a lot of boxes for our team.

Yeah, the size is very tempting but he doesn't use it from what I've seen. I wonder if there's a way to pull Manson out of Anaheim? They must be considering a rapid rebuild/shakeup.

 

[Skin Tape Session]

Yeah, the size is very tempting but he doesn't use it from what I've seen. I wonder if there's a way to pull Manson out of Anaheim? They must be considering a rapid rebuild/shakeup.

I would trade kap, Johnson and picks to get manson

 

[moon111]

Leafs need to sign a big tough right-handed defenseman who won't cost too much. Someone who shows up in the plus side of the ledger while putting up at least 19 minutes a game.
Maybe they can sign a UFA who can fit that bill. Hey look, there's Roman Polak!

 

[rumman]

package Nylander with whatever to get a top four RHD man, then trade Zaitev and Brown to the Oilers for Larsson, resign Hainey.

Rielly RHD
Muzzin Larsson
Dermott Hainsey

 

[The Iceman]

Leafs need to sign a big tough right-handed defenseman who won't cost too much. Someone who shows up in the plus side of the ledger while putting up at least 19 minutes a game.
Maybe they can sign a UFA who can fit that bill. Hey look, there's Roman Polak!

Polak/McQuaid for 3rd pair RHD. McQuaid would be in limited minutes. Someone to be solid on the PK.

I am in the minority but I even liked what we got from Mark Fraser when he was here. +18 in the strike shortened season and 220 lbs every day. I would like to have 1 of these big D types in our bottom pair.

 

[HellasLEAF]

Yup, with you OP. About as glaring a need as signing Marner.

Teams don't tend to give them up and we are limited on cap so will be tough.

If not for the cap we should be all in on Karlsson.

 

[Community]

If we are able to move Marleau (and Brown if we want to) while signing AJ/Kapanen/Marner to contracts of 3/3/10m, we have 5m to spend on a defenseman to just BARELY sneak under the cap. If the Leafs think he can return healthy, a contract valued at 5m should give us a good chance to sign Anton Stralman.

Hyman - Tavares - Marner
Johnsson - Matthews - Nylander
XXX - Kadri - Kapanen
XXX - Gauthier -Moore

XXX = Petan, Mikheyev, Bracco, Marchment, Timashov, or Korshkov

Rielly - Stralman
Muzzin - Zaitsev
Rosen - Dermott

Hyman and Dermott can be replaced with players that have the same/lower caphits until they are back as well (one of the XXX replaces Hyman while Liljegren/Sandin/Holl take Dermott's spot to start the season).

We take a small depth hit up front (lose Ennis, have to roll with 3 rookies to start the year), but we could also afford another Ennis-type rebound contract if somebody is available due to Hyman being out to start the year (due to LTIR).


*** One tricky part is getting around the Horton contract, but his salary is only 3.6 m instead of 5.3m so we may be able to offload him as well if we can't get under the cap on day 1 (before we are allowed to put him/Hyman/Dermott on LTIR).

*** I also know there have been rumours about Marleau not being moved, but all of the analysts are purely spit-balling and have no idea what Dubas and his team are planning IMHO.

 

[Community]

Yup, with you OP. About as glaring a need as signing Marner.

Teams don't tend to give them up and we are limited on cap so will be tough.

If not for the cap we should be all in on Karlsson.

While Karlsson would be a great addition to any team, he would make a terrible partner for Rielly.

He is absolutely atrocious defensively and Rielly would have to play a much more reserved game in order to compensate. In the extremely unlikely chance we ended up signing him, the right move would be to put them on different pairings.

 

[Gabriel426]

What if Coach Q wants to have Kane 2.0 on his team is offering Ekblad and swapping 1st rounders 2020 for Marner? I don’t think I will say no to that.