We were in Game 1 (carrying the play) until Andy had some rebound trouble late. After that the penalty parade killed us, but it wasn't a horrible game overall.
Post-Game Talk: Thats all she wrote.
- Thread starter Warden of the North
- Start date
Really proud of Rielly tonight to come out and have his best game of the series. I called him out and he really responded.
Gards and Anderson may have had rough games but chin up folks. The best is yet to come with this group.
Gards and Anderson may have had rough games but chin up folks. The best is yet to come with this group.
ULF_55
Moderator
Doesn't the return determine whether trading someone is good for the team?
Jake will be 28 this summer, not old for a d-man, but he's UFA next year. Do the Leafs really want to lock him up long term, knowing what it might cost, and knowing his ceiling? I think Jake is what Jake is going to be.
Overall, a good season for the young guys, but they came up against one of the best teams in the league. Bruins are a top team, Leafs are climbing into that area, but aren't there yet.
Looking forward to see what the line-up looks like next year. Will miss van Riemsdyk's goals, but nothing else about him. Funny thing is that perhaps next year the Leafs will be strong enough to carry him, but he'll likely end up on a team that just needs a stick and in 2 years the talk would be how he could help the Leafs.
So Liljegren or trade?
Wait until next year!
Jimmy Firecracker
Fire Sheldon.
Matthews and Willy are 20 and 21. They were bad but comparing them to Bozak and JVR is a false equivalency. Bozak is 32, JVR will be 29 come May. These guys have been around the block.
They weren’t total liabilities but they were non-factors these playoffs. When push came to shove once again they were nowhere to be found.
Trapper
Registered User
- Nov 21, 2013
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Yes also keep in mind that Chara, Bergeron, Marchand were not being sent out against Bozak/JVR. There is a reason they are the sheltered line. You can't always just look at points in the matchup game.
Craig Button
The C is for Coward - Brad Marchand 2024
Yeah you're 100% right (sarcasm)
Comparing a 30 year old Stanley Cup champion in his 12th season to a 20 year old is f***ing dumb
You didn't do any better than in the fourth line players if he was hurt he wouldn't do any good anyway
kesleaf
Registered User
- Mar 3, 2011
- 1,965
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I swear some people on here are saying some really dumb shit. It’s hiliarious.
Gary Nylund
Registered User
- Oct 10, 2013
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Sure, anyone can be traded at any time depending on the return. That's not what this is about though, it's about people thinking we'd be better off even if we gave him away. It seems like those people would be happy if we traded him without even thinking about the return.
It was one really bad game but up until that point, he was maybe our best Dman in the series. Dmen are hard to come by. I'll leave it to the guys in charge to decide in his future but if he was locked up long term, I think I'd be very happy as long as the price is fair. He's an amazing skater and I think he'll be good for many years to come because of that.
Morning Dart
Registered User
Really didn't want to be writing a post-mortem this morning, but here we are.
Look, this sucks. It sucks to lose, it sucks hard to lose to the Bruins, and it sucks the hardest to lose in that fashion. Again.
The reality is, it was pretty clear from the outset that we still don't have the personnel on the backend to be considered true Cup contenders. Most rational fans would have told you the same thing before Game 1. The Bruins absolutely exploited Hainsey and Polak all series. Gardiner had his usual flashes of brilliance followed by stretches of absolutely ludicrous brainfarts. Dermott played well at times, and other times he looked the part of a shell-shocked kid playing in his first playoff series. I thought Zaitsev improved as the series went on, but his series, like his season, was absolutely not up to snuff.
There's 5 of your 6 defencemen who were either flat-out not good enough, inconsistent, error-prone and/or inexperienced. That's not a recipe for success. We basically sent out Morgan Rielly and a bunch of question marks game after game. It's a symptom of the fact that not even our own management team saw us coming this fast. Sure, the pieces were all in place, but consider this; two years ago, almost to the day, we won the draft lottery that granted us the Auston Matthews pick. In just two years, we've made an incredible turn around. This playoff loss will inject the fanbase with a heavy dose of the kind of realism we haven't experienced in a few years now (and will drive thousands more even further off the cliffs of their own lunacy), but there are myriad more reasons to be optimistic looking forward.
Morgan Rielly and Mitch Marner had absolute coming-out parties this round. In the midst of a career year offensively, Rielly did incredibly well to control much of the play while facing tough match-ups each night, all while pulling the corpse that was Ron Hainsey along for the ride. Not much of what I have to say about Marner hasn't already been said. Marner = Stud. I can't wait to see what he does next season. Better yet, his playoff resurgence serves as proof that having one bad playoff year (read: Matthews, Auston & Andersen, Frederik) is often about things that are invisible to us as a fanbase. Here's hoping our underperformers come up with similar performances next season.
This loss is tough, and our management team has a lot of work to do. For our sakes, I hope it's done quickly, and done well. Hopefully it's enough to keep the promise of better things just over the horizon.
Heave away, boys.
Look, this sucks. It sucks to lose, it sucks hard to lose to the Bruins, and it sucks the hardest to lose in that fashion. Again.
The reality is, it was pretty clear from the outset that we still don't have the personnel on the backend to be considered true Cup contenders. Most rational fans would have told you the same thing before Game 1. The Bruins absolutely exploited Hainsey and Polak all series. Gardiner had his usual flashes of brilliance followed by stretches of absolutely ludicrous brainfarts. Dermott played well at times, and other times he looked the part of a shell-shocked kid playing in his first playoff series. I thought Zaitsev improved as the series went on, but his series, like his season, was absolutely not up to snuff.
There's 5 of your 6 defencemen who were either flat-out not good enough, inconsistent, error-prone and/or inexperienced. That's not a recipe for success. We basically sent out Morgan Rielly and a bunch of question marks game after game. It's a symptom of the fact that not even our own management team saw us coming this fast. Sure, the pieces were all in place, but consider this; two years ago, almost to the day, we won the draft lottery that granted us the Auston Matthews pick. In just two years, we've made an incredible turn around. This playoff loss will inject the fanbase with a heavy dose of the kind of realism we haven't experienced in a few years now (and will drive thousands more even further off the cliffs of their own lunacy), but there are myriad more reasons to be optimistic looking forward.
Morgan Rielly and Mitch Marner had absolute coming-out parties this round. In the midst of a career year offensively, Rielly did incredibly well to control much of the play while facing tough match-ups each night, all while pulling the corpse that was Ron Hainsey along for the ride. Not much of what I have to say about Marner hasn't already been said. Marner = Stud. I can't wait to see what he does next season. Better yet, his playoff resurgence serves as proof that having one bad playoff year (read: Matthews, Auston & Andersen, Frederik) is often about things that are invisible to us as a fanbase. Here's hoping our underperformers come up with similar performances next season.
This loss is tough, and our management team has a lot of work to do. For our sakes, I hope it's done quickly, and done well. Hopefully it's enough to keep the promise of better things just over the horizon.
Heave away, boys.
ULF_55
Moderator
Ha
Your list is too short I think.
Who, in your opinion stepped up?
Marner and Marleau is an easy answer.
I don't think the other vets are up to snuff, and that includes Kadri who was one of the biggest culprits in the series.
Your list is too short I think.
Who, in your opinion stepped up?
Marner and Marleau is an easy answer.
I don't think the other vets are up to snuff, and that includes Kadri who was one of the biggest culprits in the series.
It’s hard to win in the playoffs with goaltending like that. Leafs were scoring at a good pace but the goaltending must have been demoralizing . Going into the third with the lead then giving up two softies , unbelievable.
That and that gardiner f***er has to go.
That and that gardiner f***er has to go.
ULF_55
Moderator
Certainly.
His consistency is good offense, it isn't good defense. He can be horrible in games ... that is his problem. He is not dependable, and during regular season, what's a few horrible games ... during the playoffs a couple horrible games can end your season.
I really like Gardiner and I really dislike Gardiner. He's kind of like having a great girl/boy friend who is almost always faithful.
Brown Dog
Registered User
- Jun 23, 2007
- 5,767
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I tend to agree (though watching Gardiner's interview after the game, I wondered if he'll be able to bounce back).
But change won't come easy.
Rielly isn't going anywhere
Zaitsev is here for another decade
Hainsey has another year
Dermott seems likely to make team
So that leaves....what? Polak? The sixth dman? Not a huge change. And is that spot not filled with Borgman, Carrick, Rosen, Holl?
And if they keep Gardiner next year, what after that? He'll command a pretty big contract just as AM, Nylander, and Marner start getting paid. Do we want that? Can we even do that if we want to? But, if not, can you replace him?
Just Rude
"I'm listening to the *** song!!!"
- Oct 15, 2005
- 4,636
- 3,382
Gutted after another third period meltdown, but it's clear the better team won. You can't play pee wee defence in this league, which the Leafs did for most of this series, and expect to win. And as much as I defended Andersen throughout this series, he was bad last night. The D didn't help him (again), but that go-ahead DeBrusk goal should have been stopped and I think it broke the team's spirit. Rask was there for the taking last night, and we let him off the mat.
Matthews will be back. This was a tough matchup for him and I think he was playing hurt. But this series has shown we really need some help on D. This really needs to be addressed in the off-season. The back end looked lost for much of the series.
It's a young team having growing pains. They showed a lot of heart coming back the way they did, and taking the lead into the third period of Game 7. There is little doubt this is going to be a hell of a team for years to come. They'll learn from this, but it sure does suck ass right now.
Matthews will be back. This was a tough matchup for him and I think he was playing hurt. But this series has shown we really need some help on D. This really needs to be addressed in the off-season. The back end looked lost for much of the series.
It's a young team having growing pains. They showed a lot of heart coming back the way they did, and taking the lead into the third period of Game 7. There is little doubt this is going to be a hell of a team for years to come. They'll learn from this, but it sure does suck ass right now.
ULF_55
Moderator
I have to say something about the defense of Rielly.
How often do we hear, he's lined up against the other team's best players so let's overlook his flaws?
Let's be clear every team has defenders who line up every game against the other team's best players.
The goal is to have defensemen who can do that.
Hopefully the Leafs can get someone to play with Rielly, someone as good or preferably better who make it unnecessary to say, "but he plays against the other team's best players ..."
How often do we hear, he's lined up against the other team's best players so let's overlook his flaws?
Let's be clear every team has defenders who line up every game against the other team's best players.
The goal is to have defensemen who can do that.
Hopefully the Leafs can get someone to play with Rielly, someone as good or preferably better who make it unnecessary to say, "but he plays against the other team's best players ..."
- Dec 12, 2017
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Are the D bad based on the system they play? When they constantly have to get the puck to the forwards at the red line rather than the blue line it seems to me that logically it would create more turn overs.
The defensive coverage by the 5 man unit is atrociously bad. They can bring in Larry Robinson and if they don’t change how the defend, it would still be chaos.
Andersen saved this team all year by making enormous saves at opportune times.
The defensive coverage by the 5 man unit is atrociously bad. They can bring in Larry Robinson and if they don’t change how the defend, it would still be chaos.
Andersen saved this team all year by making enormous saves at opportune times.
ULF_55
Moderator
That Hainsey is under contract for another year just means he's under contract for anther year. Definitely is a NHL defender, but not a 1st. pairing defender. That's not on Hainsey, that's on management.
Craig Button
The C is for Coward - Brad Marchand 2024
Oh NO!!!!! That changes everything.
Man. I was so wrong.
My bad, my bad.
I didn't know that making dumb comparisons between a 30 year NHL Stanley Cup Champion to a 20 year old kid will be "smartified" by bringing up salary.
Damn what happeneded when did the Salaried get so higheded in the NLH. Someshing musht OF happyned from 1994 to 2018.
I should OF noon that celery from plyers deadcages lazers makes dumm carparices smarties
mashedpotato
full stack.
- Jan 10, 2012
- 2,153
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Clark4Ever
What we do in hockey echoes in eternity...
Another game 7 defeat that we snatched from the jaws of victory at TD Garden.
Despite the letdown performances from some key players, we also had huge performances from several others last night, and should have held on to win.
Freddy made some great saves but once again, he let in back to back softies in the 3rd and that turned the tide.
I'm really disappointed as I thought we were finally past this issue haunting us in the playoffs. Freddy is so much better than that.
Despite the letdown performances from some key players, we also had huge performances from several others last night, and should have held on to win.
Freddy made some great saves but once again, he let in back to back softies in the 3rd and that turned the tide.
I'm really disappointed as I thought we were finally past this issue haunting us in the playoffs. Freddy is so much better than that.
It's hard to win in the playoffs with goaltending like that, but in this case both teams got the same level of goaltending
ULF_55
Moderator
Matthews ended the series with 55% at the dot. A 10% improvement from last year's playoffs and against a good face-off team.
Nylander didn't take as many but ended up 60%.
Kadri 41.5%
So who are the centers next year? Is it October yet?
Nylander didn't take as many but ended up 60%.
Kadri 41.5%
So who are the centers next year? Is it October yet?
