Who would you choose at this point. Toronto or Montreal ?

[Captain Mountain]

No they just have Suzuki and Caufield who despite not being as good in the regular season, have shown much more in the playoffs and gotten further than those guys ever will.

Matthews and Nylander have done just as well as them tbh. Toronto's issue has been goaltending and filling out depth.

 

[Mrb1p]

I'm not even joking when I say you and McCagg would get along well these days

Yep. He fell off so hard lol.

 

[WeThreeKings]

Matthews and Nylander have done just as well as them tbh. Toronto's issue has been goaltending and filling out depth.

That's a problem, though. You get paid like McDavid and Pastrnak, you better produce better than Suzuki and Caufield where it matters.

 

[Tabarouette]

gotta love the absolute fandom in here of people watching Boston win a cup and going hmmm tough call I think Scherbak looks great and Yannick Weber is the future

it's ok to admit our rivals are just better

 

[Mrb1p]

gotta love the absolute fandom in here of people watching Boston win a cup and going hmmm tough call I think Scherbak looks great and Yannick Weber is the future

it's ok to admit our rivals are just better

Bergeron is about to be completely washed in 2015.

 

[Mrb1p]

The boys in 2017: Im taking the Habs over the Avs all day! Their window is closing, the Habs have a great team!

 

[WeThreeKings]

gotta love the absolute fandom in here of people watching Boston win a cup and going hmmm tough call I think Scherbak looks great and Yannick Weber is the future

it's ok to admit our rivals are just better

Boston is better. Tampa was better but are now going through what teams go thorugh when you pay the price to win.

Toronto were better but they proved they are regular season frauds. There's no reason to choose them for the next 10 years, same way as Buffalo and Ottawa looked ahead of us for the rebuild, but they can't ever get out of the bottom, so why would you choose them either?

When teams show you who they are, believe them.

 

[Tabarouette]

Boston is better. Tampa was better but are now going through what teams go thorugh when you pay the price to win.

Toronto were better but they proved they are regular season frauds. There's no reason to choose them for the next 10 years, same way as Buffalo and Ottawa looked ahead of us for the rebuild, but they can't ever get out of the bottom, so why would you choose them either?

When teams show you who they are, believe them.

how did you feel about the Capitals roster in 2017

a team who clearly showed they could not perform in the playoffs for almost a decade eh

 

[WeThreeKings]

how did you feel about the Capitals roster in 2017

a team who clearly showed they could not perform in the playoffs for almost a decade eh

When Toronto has John Carlson, Evgeni Kuznetsov and Braden Holtby develop out of their system, we can revisit that conversation. But they don't. They basically built a brand new core around Ovechkin and Backstrom.

 

[Tabarouette]

When Toronto has Evgeni Kuznetsov and Braden Holtby develop out of their system, we can revisit that conversation. But they don't.

yeah that's hindsight 20/20, that's why you're being shortsighted and frankly, un gros fe-fan

 

[WeThreeKings]

yeah that's hindsight 20/20, that's why you're being shortsighted and frankly, un gros fe-fan

lol

Or you are making an excuse for a core that can't get it done and choosing an outlier that doesn't apply. All good bud, you can say you aren't "biased" because you chose the Leafs.

 

[Canadiens98]

If this was the Bergevin era I am sure most Habs fans would have been logical enough to pick the Leafs.


Elite talent is worthless if they don'r turn it up in the playoffs. Caufield and Suzuki et al got to the Cup final. Leafs can't get out of the 1st round.

The counter argument is knowing the Leafs core will get you to the playoffs but I hear you

 

[habamillions]

Depends what you are hoping for. Just trying to get to the playoffs? Then toronto. But trying to build a team trying to go for a cup then probably montreal. But they are nowhere close to either right now.

 

[LaP]

Depends what you are hoping for. Just trying to get to the playoffs? Then toronto. But trying to build a team trying to go for a cup then probably montreal. But they are nowhere close to either right now.

Their management is the problem. The same thing would happen here.

I'd chose our management. I'd chose their core (with our management having the possibility to rewind the contracts and also not sign Tavares). Signing Tavares instead of keeping Kadri was their biggest mistake and i'm confident KH would not have done it.

 

[Canadiens98]

mIt's a case of how you need to be prudent with your cap space because you never know what's around the corner. Never assume anything.

It's the main reason I was against pld. Don't use a big ticket on a guy that we don't even know will be better than suzuki/Dach.

Thats 8.5 million of cap space you're not getting back for a while.

Suzuki and Caufield have blessed us with their contract. Imagine we had $12mil to help support them instead of seeing it go to Anderson + Gallagher?

 

[Captain Mountain]

That's a problem, though. You get paid like McDavid and Pastrnak, you better produce better than Suzuki and Caufield where it matters.

They do produce better. Nylander especially.

I'm not pumping the Leafs tires, Montreal was literally in the worst position of any NHL team two years ago, they still have a ways to go. Until then, I'll bet on the team with elite talent.

 

[Cournoyer12]

Toronto at the moment for me but that could change. The core is still pretty young and with Tavares big contract coming off the books in a year they will have the cap space to improve their D.

If Matthews leaves after his contract, they will obviously have a tough time recovering from that.

If we get lucky and draft Celebrini, than I can support Habs being in good place to overtake them in 2 years.

For supposedly being such a big fella Mathews has extremely narrow shoulders. Must be the reason he’s so shy in the corners!

 

[Mrb1p]

For supposedly being such a big fella Mathews has extremely narrow shoulders. Must be the reason he’s so shy in the corners!

Hes 6'3 and 215, thats a literal stick figure. You need to be 230 at the very least at that weight and then again, youre either very lean or you dont have much muscle mass.

 

[Jee]

When Toronto has John Carlson, Evgeni Kuznetsov and Braden Holtby develop out of their system, we can revisit that conversation. But they don't.

and we do ?

 

[WeThreeKings]

and we do ?

We don't need to right now.. we aren't capped out, all in on a consistently disappointing core, with no flexibility to address the myriad of problems that need to be addressed to be a contender.

5 years ago my answer is different, but it's not 5 years ago.

 

[The Great Weal]

and we do ?

"Matthews and Marner suck because of their playoff performance" but also "Dach will be a 1C in the NHL and overtake Suzuki".

 

[Tabarouette]

We don't need to right now.. we aren't capped out, all in on a consistently disappointing core, with no flexibility to address the myriad of problems that need to be addressed to be a contender.

5 years ago my answer is different, but it's not 5 years ago.

You're 100% mixing up their roster and their management.

Good teams with a core that strong and *good* management find ways to make room and fix (or attempt to fix) those issues. Vegas, Avalanches, Tampa, etc. Somehow those guys are all capped out of their mind yet they always manage to find ways to do great patchwork

 

[WeThreeKings]

You're 100% mixing up their roster and their management.

Good teams with a core that strong and *good* management find ways to make room and fix (or attempt to fix) those issues. Vegas, Avalanches, Tampa, etc. Somehow those guys are all capped out of their mind yet they always manage to find ways to do great patchwork

They managed it because their best players all took discounts relative to the market so they could build a deep team around them, and their best players also all showed up and produced when it mattered.

The Leafs just get owned every time they have to negotiate a contract with their talent and it leaves crumbs. Look at their draft pick capital, look at their cap sheet, look at their prospect pool.. they are what they are.

I wouldn't want that situation for the next 10 years. Even Leafs fans don't want to follow their team anymore.

 

[Kobe Armstrong]

Yep. He fell off so hard lol.

I wish McCagg was still here though, I like the balance HF boards brings, I hate when it gets too one sided either direction. We've still got homers, haters, and everything in between.

 

[FerrisRox]

The Leafs have a cup winning core that could be tweaked to win. Honestly they could win it at any time. Add a strong blueliner and they’d be legit contenders. Tavares is coming off the books soon too.

They need more than "a strong blue liner." They most definitely need a goaltender; they definitely need, at minimum, two solid defenseman who have the ability to wear down their opponents and have the ability to make the opposition think twice about heading to the front of the net and they need D-men that actually win one-on-one battles on the boards and in the corners. Because they lack physicality on their blue line, many teams (the Canadiens among them) targeted this in the playoffs and would simply dump into a corner where they know they were either going to physically punish an undersized defenseman or they were going to make that player pull up short to avoid contact. The Canadiens ruthlessly targeted Rasmus Sandin in this way during the playoff matchup between the Canadiens and the Leafs.

What compounds their issues is the problem they have with their defence being way too easy to play against mirrors itself up front. They simply aren't constructed to handle bigger teams that play any kind of physical style. Not only are the Leafs unable to dish out physical play and wear down their opponents over a series, but they also can't withstand it, either. Too many of their important players are obviously adverse to physical play and they just fade away when the games matter.

I have watched an awful lot of that Maple Leafs team with current core and it's painfully obvious they aren't a "tweak" away from anything.

This Leafs team needs to do what that Quebec Nordiques/Colorado Avalanche did in the mid 90's and figure out that it's not enough to have "good" players, but you need to have the right mix of guys and skillsets to win and the Leafs obviously do not.

The Nordiques traded away *three* first overall draft picks in order to re-build the core into a team that could win.

Mats Sundin was dealt to make the team more more difficult to play against and was turned into Claude Lemieux and Sylvian Lefevbre. Eric Lindros was moved in a trade that gave him them a playoff warrior two-way forward in Peter Forsberg, a sorely-needed goaltender in Ron Hextall and an offensive defenseman in Steve Duchene (who was then flipped for more grit and depth in Garth Butcher, Ron Sutter and Bob Bassen) and they moved Owen Nolan for a high end offensive defenseman to feed all that talent up front in Sandis Ozolnish.

These were big, bold, risky transactions to re-shape a roster that they didn't believe could win and turn it into something that could.

If they just sat around "tweaking" all the depth pieces they would have just spun their wheels until the core got too expensive.