AllDay28
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- Oct 15, 2015
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Blues also had 6 defenseman that would be at worst the 3rd best on the Leafs.
jay bouw, paranko and pietrangelo... who else? Bertuzzo? Carl Gunnarson? Michael Del Zotto? Unlikely.
Blues also had 6 defenseman that would be at worst the 3rd best on the Leafs.
jay bouw, paranko and pietrangelo... who else? Bertuzzo? Carl Gunnarson? Michael Del Zotto? Unlikely.
Edmunson and Dunn if memory serves.
The Blues problem was readily apparent for everyone, at least it was for me. The play style and great defensive play was already in place thanks to Hitchcock.
The centre ice position and goaltending were the achilles heel to me.
The ROR addition was fantastic but not enough to overcome Allen IMO. Binnington arriving as a legit starting goaltender answered their prayers. Brian Elliott and Jake Allen were always costing them.
Right, but Binnington was a Hail Mary to try and save their season. He was on waivers at the beginning of that year and was even loaned to another system the year before. They were literally like "what do we have to lose?". That would be like if Holl came out of nowhere and became a top pairing RD. I mean he did pretty well regardless, but if we had a top pairing RD making 675k come out nowhere, we are likely going pretty far too.
The other thing is that it did not happen overnight. They did not sell off their core when things went south numerous times. There were many times where they looked like they were hitting the same wall.
The point the OP is making is not that changes are not unreasonable to expect, but that in Toronto, overreactions are common and every time something goes wrong, the plan is blamed and a huge change needs to be made. I can understand the frustration and the tendency because of how many plans have failed in the past, but if your first reaction is to constantly change the plan every time something goes wrong, then nothing will ever go right. We already changed the plan a fair bit going from Lou to Dubas, and despite what people are saying, the Leafs have done better (I don't care that they had 105 points in 2017-2018, 14 points coming from shootouts is not sustainable). We need work, but this is a team that is good enough to win not just one, but multiple rounds... and with time and luck (as much as people cringe about luck being a factor), the results are bound to reflect that.
jay bouw, paranko and pietrangelo... who else? Bertuzzo? Carl Gunnarson? Michael Del Zotto? Unlikely.
Homie I'm just saying the situations were incomparable. I'm confident that core had won playoff rounds before. They were always a playoff success centric team with how they played hockey regardless of fan frustration. If anything that situation should be more frustrating because they had their ducks in a row. To better illustrate my point I'm going to also highlight what the guy replying to me said. They had 6 dman all of which would be the 3rd best at worst on the Leafs.Well, that an literally everything I just said. Three years trending in the wrong direction. Missed the playoffs (and actually sold at the deadline the year before in anticipation of missing then squeaked in). Got a legendary HOF hard ass coach fired. Watched another team draft in the top 15 with their pick from a deal used to clear cap space.
The tantrums on this board would be no less epic than the ones we're seeing now, and a decent number of Blues fans on these boards were to that point as well.
They made tough choices like trading Shattenkirk and Stastny when their season was on the line. Letting a guy like Backes walk.
I mean look at Washington too, moving on from Alex Semin (a guy with 84 pts and 40 goals at one point) and Mike Green (31G in 68GP) - these guys would be locked up to multi year deals here but these franchises made tough decisions and made trades.
I don't think this team is doing any better under Dubas, we've technically just missed the play-offs. I don't think he has the balls to make tough decisions, Blues moved Shattenkirk but we weren't really looking like a good playoff team. What did we do? We kept Tyson Barrie at the trade deadline despite knowing he wasn't going to re-sign with us.
Paul Stastny? They were one point out of a playoff spot. It pissed off their players but Armstrong didn't have faith it would work out.
Now I know what you're saying with in getting someone air dropped for free into your line up and getting something out of it, sometimes it happens sometimes it doesn't. We added Mikhayev for free and got a pretty decent top 9 forward but definitely not the top pairing RD.
I look at what Pittsburgh did in trading a 5th or 6th for Marino from Edmonton and basically got their 2nd pairing RHD of the future. We might be able to get those breaks in the future but we also need to lay a foundation of much better defensive hockey. I have no idea on how the hell to judge Andersen sometimes because he'll save like 3 breakaways or some high quality chances but maybe lets in a weaker goal. You can only let your goalie get under siege so much.
Absolutely true that difficult decisions had to be made. Dubas decided to let JvR, Bozak, Gardiner walk, and to trade Kadri/Brown/Zaitsev, because he knew they were not going to work out (so not sure your point about the Leafs resigning guys like Semin and Green to multi-year deals is necessarily true; the only pending UFA he has really signed to a lucrative deal is Muzzin... And I don't think many people are complaining about that right now). The only thing with this season I can think is a little bit different than the Blues' is that the Leafs did much better under Keefe than under Babcock (8th best point percentage in the league since Keefe took over despite inconsistent goaltending and numerous injuries), and Barrie was definitely one of the players who benefited from that (32 points in 47 games under Keefe; 13th best for defensemen in that period of time). It would be different if we were a fully healthy team that looked like a bubble team, but 8th best in the league is not exactly someone who thinks about selling... Especially if they could be mostly healthy by the time the playoffs rolled around.
They had 6 dman all of which would be the 3rd best at worst on the Leafs.
Honestly you could disregard that and the rest of my post would still hold true. I was going off what the other guy said but nonetheless their d core is much better than the Leafs. They were built like a playoff team, they were heavy, they finished hits, they were regarded league wide as a team that should be contenders, their core had won playoff rounds. And looking just at 18-19 aside from bortuzzo all those players are better suited for playoff hockey on a team like St Louis than any of Rielly Dermott Holl Muzzin or Ceci. Holl might've done well there and is pretty underrated as well as a prime Muzzin which he's not anymore.2018-2019: Pietrangelo, Parayko, Bouwmeester, Edmundson, Dunn, Bortuzzo, Gunnarsson
2016-2017: Pietrangelo, Parayko, Bouwmeester, Edmundson, Bortuzzo, Gunnarsson
2015-2016: Pietrangelo, Parayko, Bouwmeester, Edmundson, Shattenkirk, Gunnarsson
2011-2012: Pietrangelo, Shattenkirk, Polak, Colaiacovo, Jackman, Russell
This is the top 6 for the Blues in each of the years they made it past the quarter-finals since they've been a competitive team. You are telling me all of those guys are better than Barrie, Ceci, Dermott, Holl (if not also Rielly and Muzzin as well)?
Case in point for anyone who was curious as to what I was referring to when I said that it was fine to have criticisms, but the majority of them are off-base or plain wrong. This pretty much sums it up perfectly.
I'd say the patron saint of staying the course and not over-reacting.
Are we about to acquire Pietrangelo and Parayko?Three straight seasons of declining regular season points percentage? Check
Fire the coach? Check
Miss the playoffs? Check*
Have another team use your lottery pick in the low teens because of a cap shedding deal the summer prior? Check
Didn't have a first rounder last year because of a trade for an impact player that re-signed? Check
Pretty bleak right?
This is the Blue's circa June 2018
Now, it didn't just happen for them.
At the deadline they moved a fairly high end C rather than re-signing him to recoup futures
then in the off-season they made a major splash, dealing yet more futures plus to middle of the roster players in a cap in cap out deal for a team complexion changing impact player
Two trades.
pietrangelo,,possiblyAre we about to acquire Pietrangelo and Parayko?
Maybe Bennington as well.
50% of the cap spent on 4 players that cover 2 positions - don't think the Blues did that.No parallel is perfect. And the title of the thread is literally "don't expect the same outcome", but was looking at past draft results saw the origin of the Farabee pick and realized just how many of Dubas' supposed capital crimes had been committed by a cup winning GM in the two years immediately prior to winning the cup.