Yes, because spending 1/4 of your cap on 2 wingers is a tried and true recipe for playoff success.
It's probably not bullish, as much as it's hopeful that the team you are a fan of, can come through at some point.
It is also spending 1/4 on the wrong two RWers. Nylander and Marner will put up points in regular season which is closer to shinny but when the rubber hits the road and teams stop teams from playing shinny, Marner and Nylander fail. Give me 2 of Kutch, Pasta and Draisatil for $22m any day of the week over our two ballerinas.
The problem is you have and will again back up the brinks truck before they have won anything. They are betting on two horses that have proven they cannot win a big race 8 years in a row and you are hoping that you are not repeating the same mistake.
The post I’m replying to was more bullish than hopeful. I don’t think anyone in this thread is proposing moving on from Marner because they don’t want the Leafs to succeed. Speaking for myself, I want them to win and the current recipe clearly doesn’t work (I could be proven wrong over the next 2 months).
Yes - you have three of the top 10 highest paid players in the league, soon to be 4 and none of them are in the top 30 for playoff points since the big 4 was assembled. Matthews has the highest P/GP among them and he’s not even top 10 in P/GP or G/GP in the playoffs over that time frame and he’s the highest paid player in the league.
You are not alone. If they lose in round #1 again, how can you justify having given Nylander 11.5mx8 and following it up by giving Marner a minimum of $11.5mx8? It would be pure insanity.
If it's at the cost of Marner, no, we would not. If we want to reallocate cap space, we can do so without getting rid of one of our best players.
I agree. You should tell Treliving.
If they fail to make it past round 1, how does getting rid of one of your best players really help? Change for the sake of change may feel cathartic in post-loss emotion, but gutting your team of one of its best performers doesn't actually accomplish anything positive.
We're not repeating the same thing. The team was different in every one of those years, and it will continue being different every year moving forward. And even in some hypothetical world where we could somehow repeat the exact same thing, that wouldn't mean we would get the same outcome anyway. That's not how hockey works.
There is no "tried and true recipe for playoff success". There are a million different ways to win, and having two elite wingers can certainly be part of one.
At what point do you look at the lack of success, compared to the rest of the league, and determine this is the wrong path to take? Since Marner/Matthews/Nylander entered the league in 2016:
And have ONE playoff series win to show for it…
For a variety of reasons that aren't improved by dumping one of your best players and making your team worse.
Yes - because most of the teams that I mentioned have missed the playoffs and since surpassed the Leafs. There's no point in reflecting on past regular season point totals when they didn't accomplish anything and the present team sits in 10th (not to mention none of the teams above the Leafs have Marner on their roster yet they somehow have been better than the Leafs this year).
Since 2016, or 2017, or 2018, or 2019, or 2020, or 2021, or 2022, we have been a top-5 team or better over all of those different stretches.
Do they hand out a cup for top 5 regular season teams over multiple years? Where do they rank in playoff series wins over that time frame?
They don't hand out cups for regular season win rankings over multiple years.
There isn't much point in trying to measure current teams by their past regular season success or past playoff series outcomes, especially when devoid of context.
Might be buying high and he might be a flash in the pan but Stolarz would be my target for the right price.
