2019-2020 Around the League Thread

[Foppa2118]

Hatheway spit on Gudbranson tonight and it's disgusting.

What a gutless coward. He keeps stirring things up even after his fight, and then when he suddenly settles down once Gudbranson comes over, he spits on him while the linesmen are there to save him.

I see Leipsic has learned from Tom Wilson that you can skate into your hits without the referees ever calling you for charging too. I'll never understand why they let some guys get away with this.

 

[JoeSakic13]

Cory Schneider waived

 

[dahrougem2]

Believe me, nobody is picking that contract up

 

[Pokecheque]

So are the Ducks good? Bad? Mediocre? Hard to say, sounds like Gibson is as good as ever but the team in front of him is still trying to figure things out.

 

[Balthazar]

Gostisbehere is quietly giving Barrie a run for his money in the sucking department this year. Same kind of defenseman, too.

 

[MarkT]

Gostisbehere is quietly giving Barrie a run for his money in the sucking department this year. Same kind of defenseman, too.

He was always overrated. He put up points so people assumed he was either good or would become good at the other aspects of the game. Then when the points started going away the rest of his game was exposed.

 

[S3rkie]

He was always overrated. He put up points so people assumed he was either good or would become good at the other aspects of the game. Then when the points started going away the rest of his game was exposed.

But he has a really cool nickname.

 

[S E P H]

1. Not much a GM can do about a player refusing to sign. He wasn't arbitration eligible yet, and there is no other way to force a player into a contract.

2. Overall, the Nylander contract is not that expensive. $7M cap hit for a 60+ point C/W is not bad. Last year was crazy high due to the way the holdout is handled, but it makes the rest of the years lower.

3. Not much argument here, though I would add that AM34 got this much in large part because JT got $11M ....which was also on Dubas. Don't sign JT, AM does not have that comparable, so he takes less. (Nylander may have been influenced by the JT contract as well).

4. This contract also follows from the AM34-JT deals, don't do the first, the others are more reasonable.

5. Kadri did not fit in TOR any more. They moved him for a good deal, getting back a top producing D and a fair 3C. Problem is Babcock refuses to play guys to their strengths, and having Reilly means he can get away with not playing TBoobs right.

6. Locking up a proven 40+ point 3C on a fair deal for 4 years is not a bad thing.


Dubas has not been perfect, but not every move has been bad. Snowball effect on contracts from signing JT (to appease Shanny and the fans?) is the biggest issue.

Dubas will be a good general manager one day, but it seems that he needs to learn from mistakes and a reason why teams don't tend to hire 30 year old GMs without much experience. I think he handled the Nylander situation extremely poorly and even though the contract to him is actually pretty solid, the problem is that Nylander is a complete complimentary piece. He should've signed him and then traded him for defensive help and even if they grabbed Barrie, the weakest part of their team currently is soundness at the defensive level.

Matthews deal is probably bad, but I am part of the crew that you want to bend on your star players contracts and be more willing to give them what they want. You don't want to sour that relationship and I guess it is worth the risk, what I dislike is that contract pretty killed the market for the rest of the league. They also get reap what they sow in the Marner contract based on what Matthews got, but those contracts won't be the ones to kill their team IMHO.

Agreed on Kadri, he like Nylander is a complimentary piece and wasn't going to have another productive season. However, with hindsight they lost a lot of physicality elements with Kadri that they won't be getting back with Kerfoot. That team is butter soft now, but I am not sure Kadri has been super physical with us either. I mean he wins board battles, but I think his two suspensions have sort of neutered his game as well, as he's playing with a lot more caution. Kerfoot sucks and will show it when he disappears in the playoffs.

Speaking of Tavares, can we all agree that he didn't become the leader they expected him to become? His stats are alright (roughly ppg) but doesn't come accross as the elite C capable of carrying a team. Him and Matthews together are unable to do what Mack is currently doing alone.

A Tavares Maple Leafs are a better team than a non-Tavares Maple Leafs.

 

[Gatorbait19]

If the leafs lose tonight they’ll need to play at a 108 point pace to reach 100 pts this season. The team record for points is 105.
If they play at a 100 point pace for the rest of the season they’ll end up with 93.

 

[Balthazar]

A Tavares Maple Leafs are a better team than a non-Tavares Maple Leafs.

This is true on the surface but if the Leafs don't get Tavares it changes a lot of different things. Nylander, Matthews and Marner likely get different (lesser) contracts and they have 11M+ to fix holes in the team. They keep Kadri as their 2C and Matthews gets captaincy.

It looks like the Tavares acquisition f***ed the path of this team. They had "the big 3" and were going to build the team around them but everything changed and possibly for the worse. Now it's every man for himself and they try to squeeze out as much money as they can from the org.

 

[Pokecheque]

Here's some fantastic analysis on what's plaguing the Leafs.

Want to blame something for the Leafs struggles? Look no...

This type of “positionless” hockey is the best way to space the ice on the breakout. Similar to when a left back in soccer flies up the pitch with speed, having your defencemen activate off the rush in hockey like this is a great way to open up more ice on the breakout and maintain possession. It’s a big part of the reason Ryan Stimson calls defencemen “backs” in hockey. Defence is clearly part of the job, but transitioning the play up the ice has proven to be even more important.

With puck-movers like Barrie, Rielly, Holl, Travis Dermott, Jake Muzzin, and Rasmus Sandin and Timothy Liljegren waiting in the minors, Toronto shouldn’t be asking their defencemen to hang back on the breakout. They should be playing a more positionless brand of hockey, which results in more high-events that better suits the talent on their roster.

I bet if you ever used the term "positionless hockey" within earshot of Mike Babcock, he would become violently ill on the spot.

And let's be clear, Monsieur Graph here doesn't just throw the coaches under the bus. The type of system the Leafs are built to employ (very, very similar to the one the Avs use) doesn't work if the forwards aren't willing to cover for the defensemen jumping into the play. And he specifically cites guys like Marner and Nylander failing to do so in the past, leading to scoring chances and goals against.

And it ain't just Babcock, the addition of Dave Hakstol has not helped matters. His Flyers teams settled for too many low-quality shots from the point and now the Leafs are doing the same.

The creativity and versatility built right into this Toronto roster is not being utilized at all.[/QUOTE]

 

[Balthazar]

Do teams that play "positionless hockey" win Stanley cups though?

 

[Pokecheque]

This is true on the surface but if the Leafs don't get Tavares it changes a lot of different things. Nylander, Matthews and Marner likely get different (lesser) contracts and they have 11M+ to fix holes in the team. They keep Kadri as their 2C and Matthews gets captaincy.

It looks like the Tavares acquisition ****ed the path of this team. They had "the big 3" and were going to build the team around them but everything changed and possibly for the worse. Now it's every man for himself and they try to squeeze out as much money as they can from the org.

On one hand, getting an elite scoring-line center to supplement your other elite scoring-line center is never a bad move in and of itself. A 1-2 punch at center IMO is an essential ingredient to a Cup winner. Rarely does a Cup-winning team not have that. Unfortunately, that move may have led to some unintended consequences. One, while getting another center may have ultimately proven to be necessary, it wasn't quite their biggest need. I'd argue the biggest needs were on defense and in goal. They've since taken great strides toward addressing the former, but the latter is still a mess. And while I really do like Tyson Barrie, I wouldn't call him a massive upgrade on Jake Gardiner. And then of course the other issue came in the form of contract negotiations. None of the "Big Three" were interested in taking discounts of any kind.

Something tells me this is gonna end up being a lost year for the Leafs. And I anticipate they will bounce back just fine. But things that they've been trying to hold off previously are all coming to a head now.

 

[Pokecheque]

Do teams that play "positionless hockey" win Stanley cups though?

Sure they do. Go watch the Blues and see how often their defenders (especially guys like Vince Dunn) jump into the play. In fact, their wealth of defensive and two-way forwards affords their very talented blueline corps even more free rein than most other teams because they can easily cover for them.

Oh, and the article specifically states that the Penguins won back-to-back Cups because they went balls to the wall and forechecked like crazy, playing to their strengths. Previously, under Mike Johnston, they tried to play a tight defensive system and floundered horribly.

I'm willing to guarantee you virtually every Cup winner and Cup Finalist had at least one or two defenders willing to jump into the play regularly. I bet a vast majority of those teams also employed a very aggresive puckmoving system and forecheck.

BTW, I'm sure you know this but "positionless hockey" doesn't mean there's no organization or structure. On the contrary, there has to be quite a bit of organization there, players gotta all be on the same page. There's plenty of fluidity, which absolutely will not do when it comes to Mike Babcock.

 

[The Abusement Park]

Sure they do. Go watch the Blues and see how often their defenders (especially guys like Vince Dunn) jump into the play. In fact, their wealth of defensive and two-way forwards affords their very talented blueline corps even more free rein than most other teams because they can easily cover for them.

Oh, and the article specifically states that the Penguins won back-to-back Cups because they went balls to the wall and forechecked like crazy, playing to their strengths. Previously, under Mike Johnston, they tried to play a tight defensive system and floundered horribly.

I'm willing to guarantee you virtually every Cup winner and Cup Finalist had at least one or two defenders willing to jump into the play regularly. I bet a vast majority of those teams also employed a very aggresive puckmoving system and forecheck.

BTW, I'm sure you know this but "positionless hockey" doesn't mean there's no organization or structure. On the contrary, there has to be quite a bit of organization there, players gotta all be on the same page. There's plenty of fluidity, which absolutely will not do when it comes to Mike Babcock.

Caps with Carlson as well.

 

[Pokecheque]

Caps with Carlson as well.

Yep, and they also have Orlov. And while their forward problems appear to be unraveling them, NSH rode their very talented, very mobile, very offensive-minded blueline to the SCF two years ago.

Honestly, I think we have to go way back to 2006 to find a SC winner (Carolina) that didn't really have a prime-time puckmover on the blueline. But that run will forever be known as one of the biggest flukes in sports history. Even before the lockout when clutch-and-grab was still in effect and two line passes were still illegal and you could park a godforsaken tank behind the net, the teams with blueline corps built around mobile puckmovers almost always came out on top.

 

[Balthazar]

Sure they do. Go watch the Blues and see how often their defenders (especially guys like Vince Dunn) jump into the play. In fact, their wealth of defensive and two-way forwards affords their very talented blueline corps even more free rein than most other teams because they can easily cover for them.

Oh, and the article specifically states that the Penguins won back-to-back Cups because they went balls to the wall and forechecked like crazy, playing to their strengths. Previously, under Mike Johnston, they tried to play a tight defensive system and floundered horribly.

I'm willing to guarantee you virtually every Cup winner and Cup Finalist had at least one or two defenders willing to jump into the play regularly. I bet a vast majority of those teams also employed a very aggresive puckmoving system and forecheck.

BTW, I'm sure you know this but "positionless hockey" doesn't mean there's no organization or structure. On the contrary, there has to be quite a bit of organization there, players gotta all be on the same page. There's plenty of fluidity, which absolutely will not do when it comes to Mike Babcock.

What about Gardiner and Reilly?

 

[PAZ]

Gostisbehere is quietly giving Barrie a run for his money in the sucking department this year. Same kind of defenseman, too.

Ghost has been that way since his lower body injury, he'll never get back to his previous form.

It's really unfortunate that an injury has derailed his career at such a young age, but he heavily relied on his quickness and agility to make plays and he doesn't have that since that injury. He's still a smart defenseman, but i'd be surprised if he puts up another 45+ point season. Barrie doesn't have that excuse besides being completely miscast by Babcock, but for the amount of money he wants he better be able to adapt to any system.

Seeing Barrie struggle shows that Sakic 100% made the right move. Bednar isn't going to be around forever, and if we got a more structured coach with Barrie still around it could've turned out horribly.

 

[LOFIN]

Oh Barrie... that was brutal

 

[Avs9296]

Barrie just did a whoopsie.

 

[Avs_19]

Oh Barrie... that was brutal

Yeah, no one to blame but Barrie for that Nosek goal. Really bad turnover.

 

[crue7]

I'm really enjoying this Leaf meltdown. I have quit a few friends and work colleagues who wouldn't shut up during the off season (live in Sauga)

 

[Balthazar]

One would think that he's trying to get the coach fired but since he broke his stick in frustration it's probably not the case. He just cost the Leafs another game.

 

[Balthazar]

Leafs lose in regulation again and I'm really enjoying it. They are now 3 points ahead of the Sens and Ottawa have 2 games in hands. No one would have predicted this.

 

[crue7]

Leafs lose in regulation again and I'm really enjoying it

This is what being cocky gets you. I f***ing love it! Feel bad for Barrie though. From a guaranteed 8+ million AAV to probably a bridge around 4-5 lol