Mikael Renberg

[Eye of Ra]

This guy played for this team for 3 seasons. He is most famous for his time in Flyers but not much is heard about his time with the Leafs.

How good was he when playing for this team? What style did he play?

Did he not play with Höglund and Sundin on a line called "meatball line"?

Would you want a Renberg from 2001-2002-2003 on this team?

Just asking out of curiosity.

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[Diamond Joe Quimby]

He was pretty well cooked when he came to the Leafs. The player that was a member of the legion of doom and the player that played for the Leafs were vastly different. Remember, he actually left the NHL for a season prior to returning to join the Leafs.

He was oversold slightly, mostly for the chemistry he had shown with Sundin at International Competition in the past. He played with Sundin a good amount, but was eventually moved down the lineup when Roberts\Mogilny were played with Mats. He also missed a couple playoff runs due to injury, which likely contributed to him not being remembered as fondly as some other wingers from that era.

Also, to answer the other question: no, I would not like the 01-04 Renberg on the modern day Leafs. He would essentially function like a Komarov the way the game is played today.

 

[Cor]

His first year was fantastic.

The other two were not so good. Could have replaced him with anyone player and not noticed at all

 

[Stephen]

I seem to recall him as a Hyman type player. Always wondered what happened to all his Legion of Doom finesse skills every time he shoveled the puck around.

 

[zeke]

he was pretty much an old broken down version of hyman when he was here.

one decent season on the top line but had trouble keeping a regular spot in the lineup by year 3.

 

[Brown Dog]

Oh yeah! Renberg! I remember him, vaguely.

 

[Tak7]

Started really well here on that top line, and then fizzled badly.

Fun Renberg story. I was at a home game against the Islanders, sitting in like row 11 or 12.

Renberg missed a really good chance, and on the way to the bench in frustration, slammed his stick against the glass - it made a massive noise, and made a bunch of people in our section jump. Some of my popcorn spilled in reaction to it, but the guy in front dropped his beer from being startled lol

 

[TheTotalPackage]

He certainly wasn't the Flyers' version everyone was expecting.

Had he not had the Swedish connection with Mats, I don't know how much rope he would have had on the 1st line. He was expected to be the digger/mucker/grinder for Sundin to free up some space for him, but it was Mats who had to drag him.

 

[deletethis]

Another member of that era where I muttered to myself "if only <that player(Renberg, Roberts, Nieuwendyk, Corson, Mogilny, Nolan)> was here in his prime"...

 

[Glenn Isildur Healy]

Another member of that era where I muttered to myself "if only <that player(Renberg, Roberts, Nieuwendyk, Corson, Mogilny, Nolan)> was here in his prime"...

Leetch, Reichel (as bad as he was here, he was a perennial 60 point producer before coming), Francis, Klee, Johansson, the list goes on

 

[Morbo]

pretty much crap.

 

[BlueForever75]

We could use a couple of wingers like him. Gritty, threw his body around, and could pot some timely goals. Looking back reminds me of what we have today in Hyman and Brown.

 

[firstemperor]

He was a weathered down version of himself by the time he got to the Leafs. It was pretty sad to watch towards the end of his tenure. Sundin pretty much single handily carrying him around, shielding/protecting the puck against ~2 defenders at times only to have all his hard work die on his stick.

There are other notable Leafs I think were underrated during their time here though, Rennberg wasn't one of them. Ponikarovzky comes to mind.

 

[Loosie]

It was the 'Tre Kroner' line not the Meatball line. His first year was good, unfortunately like most of our top players he was injured for the playoffs and only played a handful of games. This was the year of the awesome playoff run of Alyn McAuley.

 

[Skin Tape Session]

We had a very hard time for some reason finding players for Sundin. The game was different back then. Sundin always had two or three guys hanging off him and was grabbed and clutched all the time. Renberg was good for us. Anyone who says he was ''garbage'' or ''crap'' were nto paying attention. He was a big body who was a possesion player. He wasn't the same guy he was previous but he was good for us. I would take Renberg over Antropov and Pookahonski any day of the week.

Aside from one bad Penalty shot brain fart reichel was good for us as well. I still believe Roberts sundin mogilny was a beast line but Quinn always line swapped to nauseam

 

[moon111]

He came in as realistically expected, but fans always wanted and expected performances from a player's pinnacle.
Reichel for example changed his game, and wasn't that bad of a defensive player but fans still wanted 40 goals.

 

[Thissiteisgarbage]

He came in as realistically expected, but fans always wanted and expected performances from a player's pinnacle.
Reichel for example changed his game, and wasn't that bad of a defensive player but fans still wanted 40 goals.

I think fans just didn't want Reichel to try slapshots from the centre ice circle on penalty shots...

 

[Dzonna]

Did he try that slap shot on the breakaway or was it Robert Richel

 

[Larcos_Unal]

it was Reichel...that plug.

 

[BreakingGood]

Did he try that slap shot on the breakaway or was it Robert Richel

That was Reichel, and it was a penalty shot in the playoffs in a game we lost in overtime in a series we lost in seven, and Reichel was most famous for great dekes in shootouts that beat Canada in a world championship and in the 1998 Olympics.

 

[BreakingGood]

Mikael Renberg was fine. Aside from the fact that scoring was lower back then, and he missed good chunks of time, his scoring numbers also look lower than they should be because he didn't get a huge amount of ice time. Even before Burke worded it that way, fans had a "top-six, bottom-six" mentality. We undervalue depth scorers, guys whose primary value is scoring but aren't top-six guys (I don't really believe in having "role" lines, though I think having one guy on a scoring line who's like Hyman or Brown or peak-Komarov is very useful). Renberg probably actually was a top-six guy, and he was probably top-180 in points-per-game among regular NHL forwards every year he was with the Leafs (I haven't looked), but the Leafs had a lot of good players, and he didn't get a ton of ice time. In his first year here he played 14:35 per game, and that was a minute more than either of his other two seasons. That one year, when he got a decent amount of ice time with Mats, he had one fewer point than Gary Roberts' peak with the Leafs, and even that year he missed 11 games. If we had numbers like pts/60 back then, you could probably see he was actually fine, and got battered because he was both old, and European, and those were the two things that people blamed for all the Leafs' problems in the Quinn era.

 

[MSZ]

Leetch, Reichel (as bad as he was here, he was a perennial 60 point producer before coming), Francis, Klee, Johansson, the list goes on

Leetch and Francis were actually pretty good during their short stay, at least in the regular season games. They were MIA in the Flyers series though.

 

[teleman]

Didn't Renberg have a mishap with a boat propeller?
And later on almost lose a hand to an infection?

 

[namttebih]

Leetch, Reichel (as bad as he was here, he was a perennial 60 point producer before coming), Francis, Klee, Johansson, the list goes on

Wesley, Lindros...

 

[1specter]

Renberg and Reichel were both very forgettable.