This thread is awfully quiet today. Of course the decision backfired, as many of us on here said it would.
Anyone with half a brain could see that Boston, Tampa Bay, and Pittsburgh were better and more experienced teams than this young Leafs squad.
And all 3 teams went “all in” at the deadline (or well before) to get even better, something Lou said the Leafs were unwilling to do. That should have forced Leafs management to at least recoup some assets on deadline day for JvR, but they decided not to. And gained nothing from it that they wouldn’t have had anyway (first round exit), wasting good assets in the process. Just gotta hope they don’t make the same mistake with Gardiner, he is worth just as much as JVR, if not more.
okay you want someone to say something?
anyone with half a brain could see that they were better - but as people have been saying all day long the Leafs handed/gave away that series.
Again. if you want to argue that the leafs
should have given the players away - no one is disputing that. What you and a crap tonne of other people were advocating was wrong. You do not lop off a chunk of your team before the playoffs regardless if they are 'ready' or not.
what you and a lot of people also fail to acknowledge that there wasn't a lot of even 'reported' interested (outside of Dreger) for either Bozak or JVR or Komarov. Nothing. nada. zilip. zilch. It's not like there was a hard reported rumor/offer whatever of this is what they would get for JVR and you could be all "okay this has some legs to it." you
hoped that we could get a bunch of picks for them right now, and I said it all year, if the offer was there to help this team (IE: NHL ready players who could help contribute) I think Lou would have made the moves because he was obviously trying to do something (Ie: trying to get another 1st round pick to make a move for McDonagh, and no one bit, and there is only one player on this team who has a 1st round pick value who would have been available)
you and others keep saying we
should have given them away. TO Who? WHO wanted them? Answer. no one who wanted to pay up a 1st round + some prospects or whatever. You can say there is value in them but apparently not enough to have anyone pay up. so even though they
should have done it (a lot earlier) there are very few teams that would have.
What they
should have done was get defense. that's Lou's mistake so get mad at him for that, not getting rid of players that obviously no one wanted to pay up for.