Sophomore Slumps

[BruinLVGA]

you said there was a good chance of the Leafs regressing (including Matthews) and Boston finishing ahead of them. No need to pat yourself on the back like this when you got so much wrong

I never said that Matthews was going to regress. As a matter of fact I stated that I thought that he wasn't going to.
I said multiple times that there were a bunch of extraordinary factors that happened last year for the Leafs + all at the same time - one being the 3 rookies doing what they did - and reasoned that it was way more reasonable for all these things NOT to happen for a second year in a row. Lightning doesn't strike in the same place twice, normally. And if that was indeed the case, it would be likely for the Leafs, who got in the playoffs at the eight seed, to miss this year. Look at what is happening to a team like Edmonton that was so much better than the Leafs last year. If that can happen to a team like that, it could happen to you too.
The Leafs are currently benefitting from the Senators and Canadiens severely under performing. And another thing that I pointed out is that the Leafs were very healthy in 16-17 and that it would have been difficult to repeat that too. It seems like you have been very lucky on that too this season, so far. Count your blessings, pray that won't change.

About the Bruins, I stated that, seeing that we have had 3 seasons between 93 and 96 points, I thought that we would be in the 90s yet again.
I would say that the Bruins have performed better than I thought, considering that we had the following players miss significant time: Rask, Bergeron, Marchand, Bjork, Krejci, Backes, Debrusk, Spooner, etc etc (only Anaheim lost more players than we did): right there it's our #1, #2 lines and a chunk of the line #3 all missing a lot of games. If we had all of them all the time, like you had, we probably would be around where you are in the standings or ahead. Even with that, we're not THAT far away (7 points with 3 games in hand) and there's a lot of hockey left. 2/3rds of the season. We can still be ahead of you.

 

[BruinLVGA]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember you talking about our whole team regressing, and more specifically our offense?

You used Nylander and Marner as prime candidates as to why we wouldn't score as much as we did last year, I think you also brought up Kadri? (Honestly I could be confusing you for somebody else). But if you look at the Leafs, their top in the league in GF again, and much to do without Nylander and Marner.

So, you may have been right about Marner (on-pace for 47pts) and Nylander (on-pace for 59 points) but were also off on the Leafs. So it may be fair to thump your chest over Marner and Nylander, who may fall short on matching their past seasons total, though it's still early. But in that case, you should probably admit that you were also wrong about the Leafs offense as a whole, as that was your main argument.

Like I said I could be mixing you up with another B's fan -- and I'm too lazy to look it up, but I'm fairly certain it was you.

No, I didn't say that your "whole team would be regressing". Do you seriously think that if I mention that everything going astronomically well for a team (= Leafs 16-17) is an anomaly, that I would consider normal for a whole team to regress? Come on, that would be an anomaly too. Extreme cases (= everything's perfect, or everything's crap) are less likely to happen than situations in between those extremes.
I said that it was very possible, even likely, that just a couple of things going not as well could mean the Leafs missing the playoffs.

I never said that the Leafs offense was crap or anything like that. I repeated over and over that the Leafs were relying pretty much solely on their offense and I don't think that anyone mistakes the Leafs for a top defensive team.
The Leafs are second in the Division because they played well, but also because: 1) the Canadiens - pretty much constantly at the top of the Division for years - have under performed even if their roster isn't much changed and have a coach who is perfect for a team having Price. 2) Ottawa is severely under performing (they even got a top center like Duchene and even he dried up completely so far). 3) The Bruins have had enough injuries (basically every forward from the first 3 lines, minus Pastrnak) to sink us (but we're still floating...) and for the second year in a row we had to break in the league an insane amount of rookies.
Stars seems to align perfectly (or 95% perfect, let's say) for the Leafs for the second year in a row, will be interesting to see if it stays like that the whole season.

 

[Canada4Gold]

Also known as which guys playing their 2nd year are having bad luck? It's pretty rare for guys to actually get worse, or teams who had a full first season to figure out how to stop them, and then suddenly once it got to game 83 everyone learned how to do it. Most of the guys mentioned in this thread are slumping because of bad percentages. Or because a coach is giving them more defensive usage in their 2nd season. Those are the most common reasons for sohpomore slumps. I'd like to see the guys who have worse than last year stats like xGF, xGF%, ixGF, Rel CF%, things like that. It means nothing to me to see a guy put up 10 less points than his rookie year because of bad luck. It happens every year and then people are suddenly shocked when the player "becomes good again" the following year. Look at Ghost for instance. He was bad last year because of brutal luck. Or if there such thing as 6th and 9th season slumps as well, because if so Voracek and Giroux went through them last year but are suddenly better again this season too.

And FWIW I figured of the 3 Leafs Marner would be the most likely slump by just regressing back to normal luck wise as he was the luckiest of the 3 last year. Though obviously if any of them suffers horrible luck over a full season it will be classified as a sophomore slump and that can happen to literally anyone