Series Talk: Leafs vs Jackets - Cup quest begins...Camp is open!!

[stickty111]

We were second highest scoring team in the league at the pause and were on pins and needles as to getting in the playoffs at 72 games. Most teams can not out score their defensive of goaltending problems. We can and we have

The problems were mainly goaltending. Not defence.

 

[stickty111]

The funny thing when talking about Columbus defense is that in the regular season when Toronto defeated them on October 4, 2019 which was their second game the Blue Jackets season opener, Zach Werenski was -1 and Seth Jones finished even with 0 points.

Plus it was in that game when Marner scored his 2nd goal against them when he went right around Werenski and this great Blue Jackets defense everyone keeps talking about.

Yeah Jackets are being made into this super team with apparently the greatest coach in NHL history who never loses. Thats not reality though.
Leafs will need to compete against them for sure, but if they play their game and Andersen makes the saves he should, Leafs will be more then fine.
Lets not forget in regards to the playoffs, if Marner plays like last season Marner, that will make a huge difference.
Marner got points this season but he wasn't very impactful overall.

 

[LeafsNation75]

Yeah Jackets are being made into this super team with apparently the greatest coach in NHL history who never loses. Thats not reality though.
Leafs will need to compete against them for sure, but if they play their game and Andersen makes the saves he should, Leafs will be more then fine.
Lets not forget in regards to the playoffs, if Marner plays like last season Marner, that will make a huge difference.
Marner got points this season but he wasn't very impactful overall.

I said this before and I will say it again.

Yes we all know that in terms of coaching experience the Blue Jackets have that advantage with John Tortorella when you compare him to Sheldon Keefe. However prior to last year when they shocked Tampa Bay, the last time a Tortorella coached team won a playoff series was when he was with the Rangers in 2013. Since that time with Columbus they lost to the Penguins in 5 games in 2017. In 2018 they blew a 2-0 series lead against the Capitals after winning the first two games on the road in overtime.

Also when it comes to Marner I believe you mean how he played in the 2018 playoffs when he had 9 points in 7 games against Boston, because last year he only had 4 points in 7 games. Unless you were referring to his 2018-19 regular season when he had 94 points.

 

[Wafflewhipper]

The problems were mainly goaltending. Not defence.

No they were Bad team defense and goaltending. Everyone knows it. Thats why the term erratic, inconsistency came in to the conversation all season. The rather large % of high danger scoring chances indicates nit a very good team defense.
Defense for me is system and therefore team defense and buy in and smartness and consistency of all that combined. Goaltending definitely was a problem. Hutch was terrible for this teams confidence. He was killing us and it wears on players. He was kept around way to long.

 

[stickty111]

I said this before and I will say it again.

Yes we all know that in terms of coaching experience the Blue Jackets have that advantage with John Tortorella when you compare him to Sheldon Keefe. However prior to last year when they shocked Tampa Bay, the last time a Tortorella coached team won a playoff series was when he was with the Rangers in 2013. Since that time with Columbus they lost to the Penguins in 5 games in 2017. In 2018 they blew a 2-0 series lead against the Capitals after winning the first two games on the road in overtime.

Also when it comes to Marner I believe you mean how he played in the 2018 playoffs when he had 9 points in 7 games against Boston, because last year he only had 4 points in 7 games. Unless you were referring to his 2018-19 regular season when he had 94 points.

Yup that point about Torts people seem to ignore.
I was talking about the regular season. He was fantastic that year.

 

[stickty111]

No they were Bad team defense and goaltending. Everyone knows it. Thats why the term erratic, inconsistency came in to the conversation all season. The rather large % of high danger scoring chances indicates nit a very good team defense.
Defense for me is system and therefore team defense and buy in and smartness and consistency of all that combined. Goaltending definitely was a problem. Hutch was terrible for this teams confidence. He was killing us and it wears on players. He was kept around way to long.

Where are you getting that from? The Leafs defence was middle of the pack under Keefe, and high danger chances were also in the middle. That's not bad defence. Also the PK was great in many metrics. Goaltending hurt the team more then anything.

 

[Wafflewhipper]

Where are you getting that from? The Leafs defence was middle of the pack under Keefe, and high danger chances were also in the middle. That's not bad defence. Also the PK was great in many metrics. Goaltending hurt the team more then anything.

Really ha yeah ok if you say so

 

[LeafsNation75]

Where are you getting that from? The Leafs defence was middle of the pack under Keefe, and high danger chances were also in the middle. That's not bad defence. Also the PK was great in many metrics. Goaltending hurt the team more then anything.

The Leafs defense after Christmas was also missing Rielly, Muzzin, and Ceci for a lot of games.

 

[LeafsNation75]

Season series recap of the Maple Leafs and Blue Jackets two games against each other during the 2019-20 regular season.

 

[LeafsOHLRangers98]

No they were Bad team defense and goaltending. Everyone knows it. Thats why the term erratic, inconsistency came in to the conversation all season. The rather large % of high danger scoring chances indicates nit a very good team defense.
Defense for me is system and therefore team defense and buy in and smartness and consistency of all that combined. Goaltending definitely was a problem. Hutch was terrible for this teams confidence. He was killing us and it wears on players. He was kept around way to long.

We were middle of the pack in terms of high danger chances given up. Goaltending was a much bigger problem than the quality of chances we gave up.

And of course a team is going to struggle defensively when 4 of your projected top 6 defense combine to miss 67 games in a 70 game season (Rielly 23, Muzzin 16, Dermott 14, Ceci 14) Combined with your top 9 forward group missing 100.

We really have no idea how well this team can play defensively because we've never seen this group healthy together. I honestly think we'll be way better than people are talking about right now. Andersen just better show up.

 

[LeafsNation75]

We were middle of the pack in terms of high danger chances given up. Goaltending was a much bigger problem than the quality of chances we gave up.

And of course a team is going to struggle defensively when 4 of your projected top 6 defense combine to miss 67 games in a 70 game season (Rielly 23, Muzzin 16, Dermott 14, Ceci 14) Combined with your top 9 forward group missing 100.

We really have no idea how well this team can play defensively because we've never seen this group healthy together. I honestly think we'll be way better than people are talking about right now. Andersen just better show up.

The goaltending stats also didn't look good when we saw Mike Babcock only play Michael Hutchinson on the second night of a back to back. For example their first game against Chicago was on the second night of a back to back and he allowed 5 goals.

There was also that game against Montreal during their first set of back to backs where they blew that 4-1 3rd period lead and when Kapanen threw his broken stick which gave Montreal a penalty shot which tied the game and Hutchinson allowed 5 goals in regulation.

 

[Gabriel426]

The fact that all teams got a few months off is already a huge diff. Players should be all fresh with no nagging injuries. Which is a huge boast for the Leafs as not only they get guys like Soup, Reilly, Ceci and Muzzin fully healthy, JT, Marner and Kerfoot have extra time to recover from their injuries instead of playing less than 100%.
In a way, at least this first round will really be best on best unless players get COVID.

 

[Dekes For Days]

Lets play five forwards in the series against Columbus and see how you like that.

Where exactly did I say that was a good strategy? How exactly did cup winning teams being better at offense and goaltending on average turn into completely abandoning an entire position?

The whole point in this is that contrary to what the original poster claimed based solely on a parroted media narrative, defense does not win championships. Defense is not more important than any other position, including in the playoffs. Cups can be won with many different combinations of positional proficiency, but if we were to pinpoint one of the 3 that has been least important to winning a cup, it has factually been defense. I supported this with evidence.

This doesn't mean we ignore defense. It means we stop building Columbus up to be some playoff dynasty just because they play good defense. It means we stop tearing down our own team just because our primary strength is offense. We are fully capable of winning with the way we are constructed.

You need it all and it needs to be good to win.

Except that's not really true. We have many examples of teams that are relatively weak in a position, especially in the regular season, who go on to win.

There is really only one apparent similarity between all of the past 12 cup winners. They were all good at offense in the playoffs.

 

[Auston Escobar]

Holy shit. Just saw his goals from last year. His shot is LETHAL. Pretty good one-timer too. With him continuously practicing on the 3rd line, I'm confident he's going to be playing in this series now.

Our dark-horse

Robertson is going to be a difference maker, kid has an amazing motor too.

 

[Auston Escobar]

This. I still can't figure out how they went from chokers to GUD Pros overnight but that is what happened.

Did you not see that he clearly said "we all know"? What more evidence do you need, plenty of broadcasters have said it as a vague platitude without context.

Their Grit level matched their Hard work level = GUD Pros winning the cup

This is awesome.

Meaningless platitudes and cliches are already in playoff form in this thread.