Line Combos: GM/Coaching criticism

[IncredibleMarner]

Mikheyev was a legitimite threat on the PK whole year - just because of his speed.
somehow however, playoffs start and Keefe decides to give Nash, Kerfoot and Foligno more PK time than Mikheyev.
the goalie pull on the PP way too early - in particular if the plan is to not put two guys in front of Price...

Hall and Palmieri were available, and somehow Dubas decides is a good idea to add over the hill Foligno (he had an old leafs cap and his father played for the leafs, great human interest story!!) and injured Nash..

get rid of both Dubas as well as Keefe asap

 

[sxvnert]

Dubas decides to keep kerfoot in the summer under the misguided impression thats he can handle the #3 spot.

Then at the deadline brings in foligno and nash, neither of which can be considered a two way center.

This is on dubas.

 

[Duffman955]

I want to see a

Foligno - Spezza - Nylander line

I legit think that's the best offense we can get for a 2nd line with our current players.

 

[SHANNYPLAN]

Hyman - Matthews - Marner
Galchenyuk - Foligno - Nylander
Mikheyev - Engvall - Simmonds
Thornton - Kerfoot - Spezza

 

[Captain14]

I have nothing to add that already hasn’t been said.
Montreal - 1
Keefe - 0
Jumbo has had a great career, but he brings nothing to these playoffs. He needs to sit.
Nash should not have been in the starting lineup last night especially since he hasn’t played a game with the team yet. He needs to sit
Simmonds should be on the 4th line.
I love Hyman, but he is not PP material.

 

[The Iceman]

Chicken Little all over this post.

Was Boston down 1 game, What happened?
Was Vegas down 1 game, What happened?
Was Pitt down a game, what happened?

My goodness, managing in a small window is never good.
Lets see where things are after 4 games. That is when panic might be able to creep in.

As far as a contingency plan when a top player goes out. At a high level yes.
But come on.
If you lose a $11 million centre there is no fixes only band aids. Otherwise you wouldn't need the $11 million player.

 

[notbias]

People are going to hate it, but Hyman needs to get off the top line. He can be a driving factor on another line, Matthews and Marner don't need him, he is a luxury.

What I could see happening.

Foligno - Matthews - Marner
Hyman - Kerfoot - Nylander
Mikheyev - Nash - Engvall (talk about low event)
Thornton - Spezza - Simmonds

What I want to happen.

Gally - Matthews - Marner
Foligno - Kerfoot - Nylander
Mikheyev - Engvall - Hyman
Spezza - Brooks - Simmonds

More speed with this line-up and more skill

 

[Menzinger]

The Leafs haven't won a playoff round yet in 15 years with this supposed "center depth" you're speaking of, Crosby and Malkin have won multiple Cups, and the Leafs just lost to Montreal tonight...

McCann is just better than Spezza straight up...

I'd love to see you challenge any of these points on the main boards.

I'll do it for you if you'd like?

What does the Leafs roster of 15 years ago have any relevancy on its centre depth today? And again, the Pens also lost their first playoff game.....

 

[TheTotalPackage]

Just want to say after last night:

No, I've never been the biggest Dubas fan. Yes, I think he is somewhat overrated. But that's just hockey, and in this moment, you have to put that aside.

The guy has and continually shows he is a genuinely great-hearted human being. He takes a lot of pride in his work/job, but more importantly, he extremely cares about his players and their families. And that's all you can hope for from someone both in every day life and in the prestige position he holds.

 

[The Iceman]

if any individual is to blame in the Leafs org it has to be the PP coach. Not related to last night but last night sure reminded me.
I think it is pretty close the amount of goals for and against for about a month now.

UNBELIEVABLE and it cost us the game yesterday.

 

[Ashdown2]

jumbo joe has to sit he sucks.
simmonds has to sit he sucks
nash was a mistake to put in the lineup or has to slot down to the 4th line. He is a black hole of skill.

unfournatly these guys will play because they bring a level of "grit" not in the lineup ... but guess what who cares , if they bring no offense and are defensive liability might as well put enforcers back in the lineup.


ALSO can we for the love of god stop putting thornton on the goddamn powerplay ......... the whole coaching staff should be fired on that decision alone.

 

[VanW27]

jumbo joe has to sit he sucks.
simmonds has to sit he sucks
nash was a mistake to put in the lineup or has to slot down to the 4th line. He is a black hole of skill.

unfournatly these guys will play because they bring a level of "grit" not in the lineup ... but guess what who cares , if they bring no offense and are defensive liability might as well put enforcers back in the lineup.


ALSO can we for the love of god stop putting thornton on the goddamn powerplay ......... the whole coaching staff should be fired on that decision alone.

thats the thing, you can be a depth player who provides no offense but is good defensively (Nash), and you can be a depth player that provides offense but needs to be sheltered defensively (Spezza) as long as you're used in the right roles. But Thornton and Simmonds are the bad side of both those, no offense and terrible defensively, they are a liability every time they step on the ice, regardless of role or usage.

 

[mydnyte]

jumbo joe has to sit he sucks.
simmonds has to sit he sucks
nash was a mistake to put in the lineup or has to slot down to the 4th line. He is a black hole of skill.

unfournatly these guys will play because they bring a level of "grit" not in the lineup ... but guess what who cares , if they bring no offense and are defensive liability might as well put enforcers back in the lineup.


ALSO can we for the love of god stop putting thornton on the goddamn powerplay ......... the whole coaching staff should be fired on that decision alone.

Nash is a black hole of offense, not skill. he did exactly what he was meant to do, he is a shutdown player, and one of the best in the league.
He played much better than I expected given his layoff, and he is going to be a vital cog in keeping MTL off the score board.

 

[Mess]

Mitch Marner (who had a very average to below average game) TOI: 27:23 including nearly a 4 minute shift to end the game in a LOSS.

Marner had 29 shift & 27:23 TOI/g = Average shift time: approx 57 secs

Then I compared that to other star players on winning teams yesterday.

Sidney Crosby - 24 shifts & 17:10 TOI/g = Average shift time : approx. 43 seconds
Alex Barkov - 22 shift & 15:30 TOI/g = Average shift time : approx 42 seconds (and this game went 5 minutes in OT)

You don't need to be a rocket scientist to know and understand what a lot of NHL coaches know and that is shorter 40-45 second highly productive shifts are more effective than long drawn out shifts that last a minute or more.

Keefe main coaching strategy is to play Marner and Matthews together and then play them as much as possible to address all situations .. He did that against Columbus last year to break a trap and shutdown system and try and score, and he is doing it this year to try a fix a flawed dysfunctional PP etc etc . This is against low scoring opposition when he has a deep team at his disposal and a high scoring roster.

Keefe doesn't use his 2nd, 3rd and 4th lines very effectively via line matching to attempt to create mismatches, and generate more offense, even with home ice advantage and last change possible. He just taps Mitch and Auston on the shoulder and tells them to get out there to try and mask is coaching weaknesses, with their skill and talent level.

The whole value of having a deep roster is to use all 4 lines advantageously and strategically to overpower your underdog opposition, not play a couple players 25-27 minutes and the rest of the line-up 10 -12 minutes. Allowing your opposition to just focus on stopping a couple players to win the game.

 

[Dreakmur]

Nash is a black hole of offense, not skill. he did exactly what he was meant to do, he is a shutdown player, and one of the best in the league.
He played much better than I expected given his layoff, and he is going to be a vital cog in keeping MTL off the score board.

Nash was fine. He has clear strengths and weaknesses, so use him in situations to best utilize his strengths. Give him and Mikheyev the PK that Marner should lose.

 

[ryno23]

I run but that 2nd line might be challenged defensively but hey need to score goals.

Hyman - Matthews - Marner
Galchenyk - Spezza - Nylander
Foligno - Nash - Mikeyev
Thornton - Kerfoot - Simmons

Brodie - Rielly
Holl - Muzzin
Dermott - Bogo

 

[BlueForever75]

JT being lost hurts. But adjustments should and will be made to ensure 2 things:

1) Replace scoring lost with JT
2) Arranging lines so that Montreal doesnt take any further liberties with our players.

These are my line combinations on those 2 criteria's:

Foligno-Matthews-Marner
Gally-Kerfoot-Nylander
Hyman-Engvall-Micheyev
Thornton-Spezza-Simmonds

Although having Nash in lineup is nice, he provides next to nothing offense and seemed very soft last night. Engvall provides better all round game with the JT loss. If JT was still playing, Nash in the lineup works. But not when you need input across all line now offensively. Plus Engvall brings, size, speed and throws the body around which we need moving forward.

If we end up going up in the series, I can see Nash re-inserted in the back-to-back game for one of Spezza or Thornton on the 4th line.

 

[On-the-Fly]

People are going to hate it, but Hyman needs to get off the top line. He can be a driving factor on another line, Matthews and Marner don't need him, he is a luxury.

What I want to happen.

Gally - Matthews - Marner
Foligno - Kerfoot - Nylander
Mikheyev - Engvall - Hyman
Spezza - Brooks - Simmonds

More speed with this line-up and more skill

I'd swap Foligno and Gally just due to combo use.

 

[mydnyte]

Mitch Marner (who had a very average to below average game) TOI: 27:23 including nearly a 4 minute shift to end the game in a LOSS.

Marner had 29 shift & 27:23 TOI/g = Average shift time: approx 57 secs

Then I compared that to other star players on winning teams yesterday.

Sidney Crosby - 24 shifts & 17:10 TOI/g = Average shift time : approx. 43 seconds
Alex Barkov - 22 shift & 15:30 TOI/g = Average shift time : approx 42 seconds (and this game went 5 minutes in OT)

You don't need to be a rocket scientist to know and understand what a lot of NHL coaches know and that is shorter 40-45 second highly productive shifts are more effective than long drawn out shifts that last a minute or more.

Keefe main coaching strategy is to play Marner and Matthews together and then play them as much as possible to address all situations .. He did that against Columbus last year to break and trap and shutdown system and try and score, he is doing it this year to try a fix a flawed dysfunctional PP etc etc . This is against low scoring opposition when he has a deep team at his disposal and a high scoring roster.

Keefe doesn't use his 2nd, 3rd and 4th lines very effectively via line matching to attempt to create mismatches, and generate more offense, even with home ice advantage and last change possible. He just taps Mitch and Auston on the shoulder and tells them to get out there to try and mask is coaching weaknesses, with their skill and talent level.

The whole value of having a deep roster is to use all 4 lines advantageously and strategically to overpower your underdog opposition, not play a couple players 25-27 minutes and the rest of the line-up 10 -12 minutes. Allowing your opposition to just focus on stopping a couple players to win the game.

except, when the Habs are caught on icing's, then he tapped the 4th line ...twice.

 

[JT AM da real deal]

Nash should have gotten into a couple games at end of year to shake rust but Dubie made a bad call using CAP on Freddy .. he did not cost us last night and he will add more value by game 3 .. sitting him means he won't play again as his issue is rust only .. better to take out Mik who is completely useless last playin and was again a no show last night with Mitch (those 2 hurt team with their play)

 

[LeafSteel]

Nash is a good player to have on the ice, and needs to be out with Mik whenever Anderson is on the ice.

Thornton needs to sit and Foligno looked better with Marner and Matthews and Galchenyuk should have stayed on the 2nd line.

we weren’t going to sweep and the Habs came to fight, but we will win this war.

 

[JT AM da real deal]

Keefer you need to sit down Mitch and have a heart to heart .. if he decides to stay on perimeter and not inject himself into game then you need to tell him you are moving him down to 4th line to try to open things up for him .. give him 3 shifts and then make da change

 

[Mess]

Keefe came up with the idea to fix his broken PP with a graybeard Thornton and an AHLer Sandin and both players ended the game at -2 and contributed directly to the loss.

Also Montreal was smart enough to leave their rookies out of the lineup for 2 reasons.

1) Rookies make mistakes and can cost games.
2) If you plan on playing a physical game on the opposition star players there is a fear that retribution will come at the expense of you talented youth to pay the price.

Sandin looked slow and not able to keep up with the NHL speed, as both Josh Anderson and Paul Byron blew by him resulting in goals against. After the learning lesson of Leafs game #1 loss, pretty sure we might have seen the end of Sandin for this series and Dermott or Sutton will be in who are more experienced.. We already saw Keefe learned his lesson the hard way as late in the game it was Rielly and not Sandin on the PP.

Keefe certainly got outcoached in game #1 and it cost the Leafs the game. Lets hope coaching mistakes are not going to be our downfall moving forward.

 

[mydnyte]

 

[Pookie]

Keefe and Dubas have to get it through their heads that grit in the playoffs matters.

And let me add, Foligno fighting Perry was stupid.

The idea of grit is that you can wear out a team over a series. Constant body checks, finishing that check and energy.

Foligno averaged 23:00 of playoff ice time with CBJ last year.

Last night, he played 12:59.

I'm not saying Foligno is the answer all on his own.

But if you've been beaten by harder working teams in every playoff in the last 16 years... is playing Mitch Marner 27 mins really going to make the difference? Is quadruple shifting Matthews for the last 4 minutes of the game doing to do anything other than exhaust the guy?

They admited mistakes and went out and got character and grit.

It's a team game and team mindset.... our Stars have demonstrated that they cannot outwork opponents when it matters. So give them some help. Let the full team play.