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2025-2026 Off Season Thread - The Rehappening

How do you know that if you removed Domi and his 11 penalties, that there’d be any drop in our PPs?
someone analyzed the numbers previously and the obvious conclusion was that refs game manage the fuck out of NHL games.

teams who took more penalties got more PPs, and vice versa.

remember the Babcock years? where we took no penalties, but also never got any fucking powerplays?
 
This was in 21-22 but I can assure you it's the same every year. Based on the r2 value and sample size, at worst it's a moderate to moderately strong correlation between penalties taken and penalties drawn. And no it's not made up or a fluke when this happens annually.

1747929955490.png
 
Domi is a better than average passer and play maker. He with Matthews and Knies next year will be great.

Bennet with a guy like Nylander could work as well...Mcmann staying there is a good option as well.
Line 3 is where we see if JT as 3C is an option.....with him and Laughton alternating wing and C.
I still can't see Robertson in that role....so with the saved JT money and the saved marner money after Bennett, I think you find a 3LW/RW with speed and some size that is a previous winner.
Then I trade Reilly and I take a long look at Ekblad.
We know what he did to us and what he did to Carolina game one. He's at least a winner.

Fourth line you ease in Cowen, maybe Lorentz again and steeves or something you get from the Reilly, Kampf, Jarnkrok, Robertson trades.

Who would you guys like to see on the third line? Either ufa or trade
 
Regular season worse. Ideally playoff better.

His replacement will no doubt be less skilled, but perhaps not as much of a bitch in the postseason.

Who is this 70 pt winger you see as a candidate in FA?

Could be FA or trade. A lot of teams look to clear salary in the summer. For shits and giggles it could be a Bennett addition and a Kadri trade. Then your choice of those 2 or Tavares on the cheap with who you move to the wing.

I mean, we should have both Cowan and Robertson pencilled into the top 9 next year as well. So again, just for shits and giggles

Tavares-Matthews-Domi
Robertson-Kadri-Willy
Knies-Bennett-Cowan
Laughton-Holmberg-McMann

Assuming Tavares is in the 4's (which sounds oddly possible) there's probably a pile of money to go chasing a top pairing defender with in there as well.

Way more playoff ratfuckery and probably about as much top 9 offence as lineup with 13.5 million dollar Mitch would have.
 
This was in 21-22 but I can assure you it's the same every year. Based on the r2 value and sample size, at worst it's a moderate to moderately strong correlation between penalties taken and penalties drawn. And no it's not made up or a fluke when this happens annually.

View attachment 27074
There’s a difference between playing aggressively and taking penalties and what Domi does, just selfish retaliation hacks, and often when the score is tight.

No ref is feeling any sympathy to even anything up on those infractions, I promise you.
 
None, and yeah it's on Shanny. He should have been traded before the NMC kicked in.
I can’t blame them. They assembled the best team they ever had on paper, with goaltending finally, and a new coach with a cup on his resume. And they figured no chance they choke again, and even if they did, they know Marner wants to stay in all likelihood and it just gives them a chance to grind him in negotiations. They didn’t expect 6-1 in game 7 at home.

The only way I blame them is if they actually only wanted to give him the one final year and then cut him loose if it didn’t work. That’s too dumb a plan though, and I don’t think it was theirs.
 
There’s a difference between playing aggressively and taking penalties and what Domi does, just selfish retaliation hacks, and often when the score is tight.

No ref is feeling any sympathy to even anything up on those infractions, I promise you.
The move here would be to check teams penalty differentials with Domi on the roster and what they did before he joined the team and after he left. This would truly give a decent snapshot of what impact Domi may have on the roster from a penalty perspective.

I'll leave that to someone else.
 
Could be FA or trade. A lot of teams look to clear salary in the summer. For shits and giggles it could be a Bennett addition and a Kadri trade. Then your choice of those 2 or Tavares on the cheap with who you move to the wing.

I mean, we should have both Cowan and Robertson pencilled into the top 9 next year as well. So again, just for shits and giggles

Tavares-Matthews-Domi
Robertson-Kadri-Willy
Knies-Bennett-Cowan
Laughton-Holmberg-McMann

Assuming Tavares is in the 4's (which sounds oddly possible) there's probably a pile of money to go chasing a top pairing defender with in there as well.

Way more playoff ratfuckery and probably about as much top 9 offence as lineup with 13.5 million dollar Mitch would have.
I'd be stunned if Robertson opens on the roster.
 
I'd be stunned if Robertson opens on the roster.

Eh, if you're asking me to theory craft, you're asking me to theory craft. I'm not trying to get into the mind of Treliving. I'll talk about what's reasonably possible or probably smart, not what I think they're going to actually do.
 
The move here would be to check teams penalty differentials with Domi on the roster and what they did before he joined the team and after he left. This would truly give a decent snapshot of what impact Domi may have on the roster from a penalty perspective.

I'll leave that to someone else.
In truth, 1 penalty taken is probably equal to something like 0.5 penalties once adjusted for the probability of a makeup call. Not sure if the public models account for this but it's just the reality of the NHL.
 
Eh, if you're asking me to theory craft, you're asking me to theory craft. I'm not trying to get into the mind of Treliving. I'll talk about what's reasonably possible or probably smart, not what I think they're going to actually do.
Probably healthier that way, but i'd be surprised if Robby is a guy Berube pounds the table for to keep around.
 
I can’t blame them. They assembled the best team they ever had on paper, with goaltending finally, and a new coach with a cup on his resume. And they figured no chance they choke again, and even if they did, they know Marner wants to stay in all likelihood and it just gives them a chance to grind him in negotiations. They didn’t expect 6-1 in game 7 at home.

The only way I blame them is if they actually only wanted to give him the one final year and then cut him loose if it didn’t work. That’s too dumb a plan though, and I don’t think it was theirs.

I went back and checked my receipts and have been requesting a Mitch trade since 2021...so yeah, I'm going to blame them. It's not that he underperforms, Matthews underperforms. He fucking disappears. Persona non grata.
 
Domi Playoffs Penalties:

Gm1: Coincedental Roughing Minor in the last minute of a 6-2 game
Gm2: none
Gm3: none
Gm4: Roughing Minor at 8:00 into the game (0-0 score), Sens scored on PP. iirc it was a soft call but don't really remember tbh.
Gm5: none
Gm6: none

Gm7: "Crosshcheck" 6min into the game with the Leafs up 1-0. Absolute joke BS call. FLA didn't score.
Gm8: none
Gm9: Roughing minor near the end of the first with Leafs up 2-1. Penalty negated by a call on florida a few seconds into the PP.
Gm10: 1. Highsticking 2min into a 0-0 game. Sloppy penalty. FLA didn't score on the PP.
Gm10: 2. Boarding penalty on Barkov with no time left at the end of the game. beauty.
Gm11: 1. Slashing penalty 10min into the 2nd, with the panthers just having gone up 3-0 on that brutal marner play. FLA didn't score on the PP.
Gm11: 2. Holding penalty near the end of a PP early in the 3rd, with the Leafs down 4-0. FLA didn't score on the PP.
Gm11: 3. & 4. Double minor for roughing up Ekblad when he drove his elbow into Robertson's head on the ice after scoring the one leafs goal in the 6-1 loss. 10min misconduct too. beauty.
Gm12: none.
Gm13: none.


I count 7 of 10 penalties that were either completely meaningless or complete bullshit. A coincidental roughing, a bullshit corsschheck, a couple minors in a blowout game and 3 penalties at the ends of two games that were over already. I guess you could get angry at the two minors when the leafs were down 3 and 4 nothing in Gm5 vs the panthers but I don't know that those were some crucial moments.

1 penalty that was definitely sloppy and dumb in an important moment - the hightstick near the start of gm4 vs FLA. panthers didn't score tho.

Then we're left with the two "roughing" calls - one in gm4 vs OTT and Gm3 vs FLA. Ottawa scored Florida didn't. I need some help remembering these two penalties tho.
 
Domi is a better than average passer and play maker. He with Matthews and Knies next year will be great.

Bennet with a guy like Nylander could work as well...Mcmann staying there is a good option as well.
Line 3 is where we see if JT as 3C is an option.....with him and Laughton alternating wing and C.
I still can't see Robertson in that role....so with the saved JT money and the saved marner money after Bennett, I think you find a 3LW/RW with speed and some size that is a previous winner.
Then I trade Reilly and I take a long look at Ekblad.
We know what he did to us and what he did to Carolina game one. He's at least a winner.

Fourth line you ease in Cowen, maybe Lorentz again and steeves or something you get from the Reilly, Kampf, Jarnkrok, Robertson trades.

Who would you guys like to see on the third line? Either ufa or trade

the thing about Bennett is that he actually plays a very similar role as Domi - sheltered offensive C. It's Lundell that does the heavy lifting as the real 2C on the panthers.
 
You keep repeating this dumb shit.

Tavares was injured and out in the first ten minutes of game 1. There’s one of the core 4.

The other three were like 24 years old, so one or two of them should’ve just been given up on and shipped out? That would’ve been the smart move, huh?
Yes. It would have been a smart move but it is also a move that would have taken the kind of guts that Shanahan simply doesn't have, which is why he's going to get shit-canned this week.

That loss to the Habs followed a previous implosion against the lowly Columbus Blue Jackets. And let's not forget that the Habs spotted you a 3-1 series lead before crushing you.

24 isn't old in the outside world but in pro sports it makes you a 4 to 6 year veteran, more than enough time for a management team to figure out if a player has what it takes or doesn't. By the time a player is 24 or 25 the die is cast and he is what he is. So now the core is in their late 20's and, surprise, surprise, they still haven't figured it out. A surprise to you, perhaps, but not to me or to anyone else who watched that series in 2021. Individually, they've all improved their personal stats and output since then. But collectively as a "core" they are today exactly what they were then: hot, sweaty garbage in games that matter. That part was never changing unless at least one or two core pieces were changed first.

A GM with the guts to accept reality and act accordingly would have made changes then. But so much (too much) of how the Leafs front office operates involves denying objective reality rather than confronting it.
 
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