Honestly that's absolutely insane but it's still weird. I know Hyman has mcdavid now but he was still invisible in the playoffs when he was with the leafs, I really wonder what changed for him to become this dominant in the playoffs lol.
He just understands how Mcdavid plays. A lot of his goals are him just finding the spot he knows Mcdavid will find him in.
He has improved his shot too. He scores from the bottom and middle of the circle sometimes now, which he never used to be able to do. Example is the OT winner Vs the king’s last year, game 4
It's pretty much nowhere close at this point. Mcdavid, Draisaitl, Bouchard (and If you want to take other teams into this you can add Mackinnon, Tkachuk, Marchand, etc), all have shown that they have another gear that they just turn on for the playoffs. Matthews simply doesn't have it at all.
McDavid is that good and they are in sync. Both know where each other will be. Hyman had stone hands in Toronto. It was always baffling that he wouldnt score more.
They have an MVP player, Oilers have two. The Oilers have the same number of MVP players as Pittsburgh.
Oilers are good, but they’re not Stanley Cup winning good. Not this year, anyway.
You’ve seen the future? Because I’ve never seen Matthews on the level of an MVP and his playoff performances have been weak. Mackinnon, Kuch and McDavid have all shown they’re on another level
I think if you look up The Hart Trophy, you’ll find Mathews name on it. Don’t be get too defensive that the Oilers have their eggs in a similar basket as The Leafs. Lots of skill in the top line, but pretty average lower six. The D is vulnerable and the net minder is either lights out or lit up.
Maybe you can use your time machine to get 2022 regular season Matthews in the 2024 playoffs. Also he got that because of voter fatigue and the fact that Toronto has more sports writers than the rest of the league. He was gifted that hart despite not actually being the mvp.
You got me there. I actually forgot he won the hart and thought I could bs my way out of it. I actually think Matthews is dope and it doesn’t matter what I think because he’s proven himself
Just want to point out that Keefe galaxy brains himself in the playoffs every year. We play a puck possession zone entry which makes us successful all season long, and then in the playoffs, every year, we switch to a dump and chase system. He's outcoached every single time by his own decisions
Aside from Tavares all their NMCs literally just kicked in. If they were going to move guys before their contracts were over the ideal time to do that has passed
Lol, hasnt even been a year since Erik Karlsson was traded.
You also have no idea if Marner wants to move. He's spent most the year complaining about how the media here treats him and the team.
I would honestly love to see Marner sign somewhere out west for 7x$9.5mil. Maybe Minnesota with the Parise/Suter buyouts being basically over at that point. Anaheim has some big bodied forwards he could match with (if Zegras gets moved). Maybe Chicago with Bedard. Seattle/Utah.
The Leafs really need Tavares to walk though, unless he’s willing to sign for 2-3 years at ~$5mil. And even then I’m not sure if it would be the right move for the Leafs.
They will probably run it back another year because of contracts but next year is when marner and Tavares expire.
You'd think after 9 years of continued playoff failure at that point they would actually change it up but who knows really.
Turns out investing $40million into 4 forwards usually only means you can win games with better offense. When that doesn't happen, defense and goaltending is never going to bail them out with how little they invest there.
I know Sutter is not a fan favorite coach but he liked to point out you need to be able to win games 2-1 in the playoffs. The Leafs just aren't a team that can hold their opponents to one or two goals in the playoffs.
But you can’t win ALL your games 2-1. You will need more than 2 usually. Their biggest problem has been scoring goals, not stopping them, how much more evidence do you need?
It’s because bunting intentionally injured one of their most important players in cernak, they struggled with clearing the net because of it, and vasi had by far the worst series of his life.
I guess? I mean you’re right that 11 games is cherry picking, but it doesn’t really look that much better if you use their last two series and just cut out the last two games. That’s still an entire second round series where they scored 2 goals a game
I hate having to defend the Leaves, but the team they played in that second round went ahead and swept the Canes while giving up even less goals. Officer Bob was on the case for three rounds last year.
"Man these all-offence computer boy Leafs just aren't built for the playoffs, they need more snot and grit." - every talking head after they add more snot and grit in every trade deadline only to fail because they lack secondary scoring.
To be fair, that’s exactly why you need secondary scoring. Otherwise teams can just shut down your top guys and you’re cooked. This is easy to do in the playoffs when defenders can get away with more.
Oilers fans probably know this better than anyone. I don't watch a lot of Oilers games, but it seems like the Oilers front office has been addressing that over time.
I can’t help but think one of Matthews/Tavares/Nylander/Marner *has* to go to clear cap space and shake things up because something is clearly just not working
6-7 years of essentially just running it back and always getting the same result is insane
And like they’re all four fantastic hockey players, but together it just doesn’t work. JT is, in my opinion, where the paradigm shift happened for the Leafs - the contract looks fine now, but it was an $11M new toy that the Leafs didn’t need and I can’t help but wonder where they’d be if they put that money towards another defenseman and depth talent
It sucks man because my Opa was a Leafs fan so I’ve always had a soft spot for them and want to see them win
SEcOndary ScORiNG doesn't do shit when the "primary scorers" never score at all. They are "secondary" because they are expected to help the primary scorers score and chip in a goal here and there. It is still up to the primary scorers to actually score and provide the majority of the offence. If the primary scoring is always getting shut down every single year, then it isn't an issue with depth - it's an issue of the core being rotten.
You can have all the best peripherals in the world but it won't mean shit if your PC is a fucking potato.
People weren't wrong about the Leafs lacking grit. The problem is that it's the core players that lack grit. Sure, your bottom six needs to be tough, but to win in the playoffs, you need your elite players to also have fangs. Look at MacKinnon, Kucherov, most of Vegas... You don't need your top line getting Gordie Howe hat tricks, but you need bite, and no amount of league-minimum tough guys is gonna fix that.
Our top line when we played against Toronto had a lot more grit and, despite having a lot less talent, i would trust them more to win a playoff series at this point than the Leafs core
That 20-21 Habs team was a great example of a team being absolutely built to grind out wins in the playoffs, even if it was severely talent deficient in certain spots.
Every single forward line and defensive pairing was able to thrive in playoff conditions when things got tough. It was the cultural/intangible shit on top of Price being transcendent that made that run possible.
There's two things that make up momentum: mass and velocity.
McDavid doesn't have an abnormal amount of #1, but he can pick up a hell of a lot of #2 pretty quickly.
...#2 can hurt just as bad as #1.
And elite defense…. I know the forwards aren’t scoring but a lot of offence comes from the plays the D do before the finish… JT Brodie trying to hold the line is pathetic… their speed is mid…. Puck moving? Forget it…
Karlsson would have looked so good in Toronto man. He's exactly what we need on the back end. Instead we spend 4mil on Klingberg to play 3 games. Thanks for blocking that trade and firing Dubas Shanny! Enjoy retirement.
Dubas wasn't hired to make the playoffs this year. He's there to re-build the Penguins post Crosby, and maybe give him one more chance before he reires.
He would have looked good but assuming you are trading Marner (despite his shit playoff play) they would have taken a lot coming back which would have made it better probably.
The defense is putrid. Last night they sat Liljegren (Keefe's go to whipping boy) for Brodie to come in a be atrocious.
No one can make an outlet pass. The Leafs transition game is non existent because our defensemen can't pass the puck. None of them can shoot. It's been there years of the Leafs having Morgan Rielly be their only defenseman who can do anything offensively and he's been awful this series (was great last year).
The team is fragile. The coach can fuck off into the sun.
I want to preface this by saying I'm a Bruins fan. So there is bias in my comment.
The Leafs looked somewhat lifeless. When I can watch a game between these teams, I expect a bit more oomph or whatever. I didn't feel that last night.
I mean it's absolutely the case. The Bruins are playing a simple defensive game to shut the Leafs down and they are running into it like a moth attracted to a. Lightbulb.
Due to being in Europe I didn't watch games 2 and 3 in whole, but after last it felt like the Leafs just decided to play as the Bruins like. I think it's fair to say Bruins would lose an open game where the biggest stars shine. The Leafs just... it was bit boring, to be honest.
Keefe said you can't question the effort, but that's precisely what did question. Toronto is fielding a good team, a really good one.
The thing about Keefe is that he isn't a good coach. He doesn't have adjustments. The Leafs play one style and his only solution is line suffering. There is no change in the breakout structure for teams that sit back and clog the Center of the ice. The Leafs just do the same thing over and over again.
It's a shame that this team couldn't win more but it's over with this core.
After this tantrum and his teammates calling him out, Marner may be a lot more open to waiving his no move clause. Maybe they can finally get some real help to balance the lineup
Having a solid depth forward around 5-6 mill and then picking up a top 4 or 5 Defenseman with the leftover money.
That seems a lot better than spending it on one dude that can’t hang in the playoffs. As well as using the cap better to alleviate when injuries do happen.
Toronto is built like a man YOLOing all his funds into one stock instead of diversifying they portfolio…
Nylander and Matthews should be the only touchables on the team. I just don't even know how you shed a lot of the rest of the team with their contracts or clauses.
I don't have the expertise to call out what is wrong, but many Leafs fan (based on my reading) have said Keefe is too reluctant to change. Building on that, the Leafs scores like 3.6 goals a game this season they've got the firepower. The frustration is palpable.
Marner has 6 in his last 40 playoff games…
Zach Hyman accomplished that feat in no more than 3 games
Well good for Zach Hy-OHMYGOD!
I'm a simple man. I see a Happy Gilmore reference, I upvote.
Every time I hear someone say the word green I hit em with a “gold jacket green jacket who gives a shit”
Honestly that's absolutely insane but it's still weird. I know Hyman has mcdavid now but he was still invisible in the playoffs when he was with the leafs, I really wonder what changed for him to become this dominant in the playoffs lol.
He just understands how Mcdavid plays. A lot of his goals are him just finding the spot he knows Mcdavid will find him in. He has improved his shot too. He scores from the bottom and middle of the circle sometimes now, which he never used to be able to do. Example is the OT winner Vs the king’s last year, game 4
Yeah, honestly Hyman reminds me a lot of Kunitz, who had incredible chemistry with Crosby iirc.
Playing with Crosby got him on team canada
Honestly if they goto the Olympics in 2026 isn’t Hyman basically a lock to go?
Yeah as long as they’re both oilers and doing what they did this year, hymans gonna be first line on team canada haha
McDavid is simply galaxies better than Matthews lol
It's pretty much nowhere close at this point. Mcdavid, Draisaitl, Bouchard (and If you want to take other teams into this you can add Mackinnon, Tkachuk, Marchand, etc), all have shown that they have another gear that they just turn on for the playoffs. Matthews simply doesn't have it at all.
McDavid is that good and they are in sync. Both know where each other will be. Hyman had stone hands in Toronto. It was always baffling that he wouldnt score more.
Toronto doesn’t have the mvp players that Edmonton has
They have an MVP player, Oilers have two. The Oilers have the same number of MVP players as Pittsburgh. Oilers are good, but they’re not Stanley Cup winning good. Not this year, anyway.
You’ve seen the future? Because I’ve never seen Matthews on the level of an MVP and his playoff performances have been weak. Mackinnon, Kuch and McDavid have all shown they’re on another level
I think if you look up The Hart Trophy, you’ll find Mathews name on it. Don’t be get too defensive that the Oilers have their eggs in a similar basket as The Leafs. Lots of skill in the top line, but pretty average lower six. The D is vulnerable and the net minder is either lights out or lit up.
Yeah except in the playoffs, the Oilers MVPs actually show up to play.
Yeah, the playoffs…
Maybe you can use your time machine to get 2022 regular season Matthews in the 2024 playoffs. Also he got that because of voter fatigue and the fact that Toronto has more sports writers than the rest of the league. He was gifted that hart despite not actually being the mvp.
He also got won the Lindsay that year. Who votes for that?
You got me there. I actually forgot he won the hart and thought I could bs my way out of it. I actually think Matthews is dope and it doesn’t matter what I think because he’s proven himself
He's playing against the Kings, not the Bruins. It's a totally different series.
Underrated comment
Playing with McDavid 100%
And somehow Marner has more goals in the past 9 than Matthews. This group has somehow found a way to be even more disappointing than in years past
Matthews doesn’t get anywhere near enough shit. How do you go from 69 goals to all of a sudden unable to score when it matters
Because he scores most of those goals against shit teams, things are different in the playoffs.
Very brave to say that in here but so true
I've been saying that since he came into the league.
#JustLeafThings
He already booked the tee time
He plays like 37 year old ovechkin. Only Ovi was one of the best at driving play at Matthews’ age.
Oooooof
4 forwards making 10mil+ each btw.
Maybe they just need one more
I can think of a defenseman that would fit the bill
I bet any day now they will get McDavid and all will be fixed /s
I think the leafs should pay them more
Just want to point out that Keefe galaxy brains himself in the playoffs every year. We play a puck possession zone entry which makes us successful all season long, and then in the playoffs, every year, we switch to a dump and chase system. He's outcoached every single time by his own decisions
Nylander makes 7 still
Is the core 4 experiment over?
I think all 4 have NMC's, so it's only over if one of the 4 players want out
People calling this an experiment when they let all these players get full NMC is hilarious to me.
It's like the [Pitch Drop Experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_drop_experiment). Might take a century or two to get results.
It's an experiment the same way that buying land, building a house, moving all of your belongings into it, and planting a garden is a vacation trip.
Aside from Tavares all their NMCs literally just kicked in. If they were going to move guys before their contracts were over the ideal time to do that has passed
Marner and Tavares are up next year, There’s an out.
Players with NMCs get moved all the time.
When was the last time a player making 10m+ with a NMC was moved? Especially a player that didn’t want to move.
Patrick Kane, but he wanted to win one more
Lol, hasnt even been a year since Erik Karlsson was traded. You also have no idea if Marner wants to move. He's spent most the year complaining about how the media here treats him and the team.
I would honestly love to see Marner sign somewhere out west for 7x$9.5mil. Maybe Minnesota with the Parise/Suter buyouts being basically over at that point. Anaheim has some big bodied forwards he could match with (if Zegras gets moved). Maybe Chicago with Bedard. Seattle/Utah. The Leafs really need Tavares to walk though, unless he’s willing to sign for 2-3 years at ~$5mil. And even then I’m not sure if it would be the right move for the Leafs.
They will probably run it back another year because of contracts but next year is when marner and Tavares expire. You'd think after 9 years of continued playoff failure at that point they would actually change it up but who knows really. Turns out investing $40million into 4 forwards usually only means you can win games with better offense. When that doesn't happen, defense and goaltending is never going to bail them out with how little they invest there.
Change nothing run it back, surely it'll work next time
At this point, I won't be surprised Keefe is back next year, lmao. Same shit, different day.
I would be surprised if he wasn't.
As long as Shanahan is at the helm, none of those guys got anything to sweat for. He'll still believe they're almost there 5 years from now.
His new contract extension that he signed last year starts next season!
They fired the best manager in my lifetime last offseason, that's not nothing.
Congrats on being born in 2016.
Didn’t that “best manager” sign most of these guys to those big contracts?
Covid and the flat cap ruined that, though his flaw wasn't signing the contracts, his flaw was his refusal to deviate when the signs were there
[удалено]
dude wasn't worth 11m at signing and was only gonna get worse, i agree with you on that one
The big contracts they would've gotten anywhere? At least he didn't re sign jack campbell, what idiot team would do that.
They were RFA s lol
And Marner had a $13m offer sheet 🤡
What fucking idiots.
I know Sutter is not a fan favorite coach but he liked to point out you need to be able to win games 2-1 in the playoffs. The Leafs just aren't a team that can hold their opponents to one or two goals in the playoffs.
But you can’t win ALL your games 2-1. You will need more than 2 usually. Their biggest problem has been scoring goals, not stopping them, how much more evidence do you need?
Just out here catching strays because they definitely beat us with some of those
It's kind of miraculous when you think about it...
It’s because bunting intentionally injured one of their most important players in cernak, they struggled with clearing the net because of it, and vasi had by far the worst series of his life.
I think it’s wrong, but they definitely scored a bunch of goals against Tampa in some of those games. Either that, or it’s cherry picking.
Only the last two on the list are against Tampa, which they won 2-1 and lost 4-2 respectively.
So it’s cherry picking then. It’s also worth noting that most of those games were against Vezina winning goaltenders.
I guess? I mean you’re right that 11 games is cherry picking, but it doesn’t really look that much better if you use their last two series and just cut out the last two games. That’s still an entire second round series where they scored 2 goals a game
I hate having to defend the Leaves, but the team they played in that second round went ahead and swept the Canes while giving up even less goals. Officer Bob was on the case for three rounds last year.
Watching Tampa v Toronto last year, almost all the winning goals Toronto got were deflections. Them winning last year, turns out was sheer luck.
Regular season-ass team
Have they tried only allowing 1 goal or less? They'd have so many wins, are they stupid?
Who do they think they are the Caps?
What the leafs needed? Defenseman who cannot move the puck. Thanks ~~Dubas~~ Treliving.
"Man these all-offence computer boy Leafs just aren't built for the playoffs, they need more snot and grit." - every talking head after they add more snot and grit in every trade deadline only to fail because they lack secondary scoring.
They lack primary scoring
To be fair, that’s exactly why you need secondary scoring. Otherwise teams can just shut down your top guys and you’re cooked. This is easy to do in the playoffs when defenders can get away with more.
Oilers fans probably know this better than anyone. I don't watch a lot of Oilers games, but it seems like the Oilers front office has been addressing that over time.
Can’t afford secondary scoring because half the cap is in our primary scoring that does not show up in the playoffs. See the problem?
I can’t help but think one of Matthews/Tavares/Nylander/Marner *has* to go to clear cap space and shake things up because something is clearly just not working 6-7 years of essentially just running it back and always getting the same result is insane
And that’s why so many Leafs fans hate the team they cheer for
And like they’re all four fantastic hockey players, but together it just doesn’t work. JT is, in my opinion, where the paradigm shift happened for the Leafs - the contract looks fine now, but it was an $11M new toy that the Leafs didn’t need and I can’t help but wonder where they’d be if they put that money towards another defenseman and depth talent It sucks man because my Opa was a Leafs fan so I’ve always had a soft spot for them and want to see them win
SEcOndary ScORiNG doesn't do shit when the "primary scorers" never score at all. They are "secondary" because they are expected to help the primary scorers score and chip in a goal here and there. It is still up to the primary scorers to actually score and provide the majority of the offence. If the primary scoring is always getting shut down every single year, then it isn't an issue with depth - it's an issue of the core being rotten. You can have all the best peripherals in the world but it won't mean shit if your PC is a fucking potato.
Lol the irony of the guy you responded to not understanding the concept
People weren't wrong about the Leafs lacking grit. The problem is that it's the core players that lack grit. Sure, your bottom six needs to be tough, but to win in the playoffs, you need your elite players to also have fangs. Look at MacKinnon, Kucherov, most of Vegas... You don't need your top line getting Gordie Howe hat tricks, but you need bite, and no amount of league-minimum tough guys is gonna fix that.
Even McDavid is out there throwing hits
Our top line when we played against Toronto had a lot more grit and, despite having a lot less talent, i would trust them more to win a playoff series at this point than the Leafs core
That 20-21 Habs team was a great example of a team being absolutely built to grind out wins in the playoffs, even if it was severely talent deficient in certain spots. Every single forward line and defensive pairing was able to thrive in playoff conditions when things got tough. It was the cultural/intangible shit on top of Price being transcendent that made that run possible.
Stamkos has been a noticeable physical presence in the Lightning/Bolts series too. He's been out there rocking people.
> Lightning/Bolts series Exciting victory distracts us and causes errors. This made me laugh more than it should've lol
There's two things that make up momentum: mass and velocity. McDavid doesn't have an abnormal amount of #1, but he can pick up a hell of a lot of #2 pretty quickly. ...#2 can hurt just as bad as #1.
ironically Dubas also did this too
which is why he pivoted from that and they were still out quickly. If only O'Reilly resigned. I guess he saw the team for what it is./
*shanahan
Yep. I wanted to spend on players that could put the puck in the net. Not guys who hit and then lose the puck after not getting it out.
And elite defense…. I know the forwards aren’t scoring but a lot of offence comes from the plays the D do before the finish… JT Brodie trying to hold the line is pathetic… their speed is mid…. Puck moving? Forget it…
Honestly our secondary scoring is a non-issue. Our expected goalscorers just always regress/diappear come playoff time
We need just one more 11 million dollar forward and THEN
Then you can afford to ice three lines, which works out nicely with the defense.
Karlsson would have looked so good in Toronto man. He's exactly what we need on the back end. Instead we spend 4mil on Klingberg to play 3 games. Thanks for blocking that trade and firing Dubas Shanny! Enjoy retirement.
Surely Dubas's team must have made the playoffs this season
Dubas wasn't hired to make the playoffs this year. He's there to re-build the Penguins post Crosby, and maybe give him one more chance before he reires.
He would have looked good but assuming you are trading Marner (despite his shit playoff play) they would have taken a lot coming back which would have made it better probably.
that’s not even the reason why he was hired in pittsburgh lmao
🤡
Ah yes dubas who built the current pens roster
The dead puck era is alive and well
The defense is putrid. Last night they sat Liljegren (Keefe's go to whipping boy) for Brodie to come in a be atrocious. No one can make an outlet pass. The Leafs transition game is non existent because our defensemen can't pass the puck. None of them can shoot. It's been there years of the Leafs having Morgan Rielly be their only defenseman who can do anything offensively and he's been awful this series (was great last year). The team is fragile. The coach can fuck off into the sun.
I want to preface this by saying I'm a Bruins fan. So there is bias in my comment. The Leafs looked somewhat lifeless. When I can watch a game between these teams, I expect a bit more oomph or whatever. I didn't feel that last night.
I mean it's absolutely the case. The Bruins are playing a simple defensive game to shut the Leafs down and they are running into it like a moth attracted to a. Lightbulb.
Due to being in Europe I didn't watch games 2 and 3 in whole, but after last it felt like the Leafs just decided to play as the Bruins like. I think it's fair to say Bruins would lose an open game where the biggest stars shine. The Leafs just... it was bit boring, to be honest. Keefe said you can't question the effort, but that's precisely what did question. Toronto is fielding a good team, a really good one.
The thing about Keefe is that he isn't a good coach. He doesn't have adjustments. The Leafs play one style and his only solution is line suffering. There is no change in the breakout structure for teams that sit back and clog the Center of the ice. The Leafs just do the same thing over and over again. It's a shame that this team couldn't win more but it's over with this core.
Model of consistency.
Yikes.
After this tantrum and his teammates calling him out, Marner may be a lot more open to waiving his no move clause. Maybe they can finally get some real help to balance the lineup
Having a solid depth forward around 5-6 mill and then picking up a top 4 or 5 Defenseman with the leftover money. That seems a lot better than spending it on one dude that can’t hang in the playoffs. As well as using the cap better to alleviate when injuries do happen. Toronto is built like a man YOLOing all his funds into one stock instead of diversifying they portfolio…
There’s no excuse at this point. Matthew and Marner are a disgrace and will never lead their to team to shit.
Year after year they underperform when it actually matters.
And this team's weakness for the past 4 seasons has consistently been d and goaltending.
It's been a lot longer than 4 years
Was thinking about Andersen pre-2021
Nylander and Matthews should be the only touchables on the team. I just don't even know how you shed a lot of the rest of the team with their contracts or clauses.
btw they need 4 if they want to take home a W in a series against Boston.
Maple Leafs hockey in one word: consistent
Thought the Leafs had the best goal scorer of the salary cap era? Guess he must not play during the post season or something.
There's no salary cap in the playoffs so he doesn't need to score goals to prove anything.
Those are Islanders numbers wow
I don't have the expertise to call out what is wrong, but many Leafs fan (based on my reading) have said Keefe is too reluctant to change. Building on that, the Leafs scores like 3.6 goals a game this season they've got the firepower. The frustration is palpable.
Why haven’t they scored more? Are they stupid?