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Around the League 2019-2024 Edition

It was not not serious

An extension wouldn't surprise me though. We've had too many opportunities to move on from him for me to believe anything other than the organization values him and feels he's a good cap spend. We just dumped Engvall instead. Thats based on internal evaluation. If dubas feels he's worth 3.5 now, he feels like kerfoot is worth 3.5 next year too and at his age, a few more on top.
 
Zeke losing faith has me shook. It was the one constant in like 25 years of this group posting together.

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Zeke losing faith has me shook. It was the one constant in like 25 years of this group posting together.

giphy.webp
You know as annoying as that was for opposing fans it's just not right. It's like a constant got rocked. Death, Taxes and zeke was constant.

I hope he's on a beach somewhere with some honey.

Toes in the sand zeke. Toes in the sand.
 
Zeke simply got his heart broken. He put his heart in soul into Kyle, believed in him, trusted him, and was ready to start a family with him and love him forever. Only for Kyle to cheat on him with boomer gudpro values. He's crushed. And I totally understand why.

First glasses and now HL

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The team isn't the same anymore for some reason. Dubie kinda broke me with double and triple down repeats of mistakes, and either not taking charge of the relationship with Keefe, or worse, being aligned with Keefe all along.

Now I feel like the team will only win despite the dumb moves, and/or will need to get extremely lucky to advance.

The Leafs definitely don't look like some well-oiled machine to me since the deadline. Aside from brief spurts like torching the Oilers in 5 minutes, they look very beatable. Maybe it's the 11-7 bullshit, or maybe the reassembled D hasn't gelled, or maybe the losses of Engvall and Sandin were more significant than expected (even by those that hated the trades), or maybe losing ROR so quickly threw things off - pick your excuse, or all of them, but we haven't looked like a Stanley Cup threat.

And that's kinda depressing considering what could've been. And what could've been is Engvall and Sandin still here, Gus and Schenn not, Kerf out, and a big name like Meier added. That was entirely, completely feasible. But they went with "toughness" ostensibly.
 
it's strange because the previous approach led to so much playoff success!!

i'm definitely not concerned at all about the lack of cohesiveness right now. The team replaced a bunch of guys, it will take some time to get everyone up to speed. And they're also testing different line combos at the same time.

also taking a slow approach because they are pretty much locked in to their playoff spot. not that they aren't trying to win, but they are taking this opportunity to try a bunch of stuff.

deep breaths, folks.
 
Im still in observation mode at the moment. More dominos to fall yet with ROR returning, Knies and McMann eventually joining (they cant keep him down forever) and trying to figure out which d pairings work best together

There are some concerning trends with certain players (Lafferty/ZAR) but there is potential for a better balance closer to the end of the season

Not adding more punch to the top 6 is a legit gripe so poopoo on nerd for not getting something done there but going forward its all on Sheldon to get his shit together
 
Just because they did it wrong, it don't mean they can't win. I don't think anyone has suggested that though.


And no I'm not worried that they've been a bottom 3rd team on the nerdies since they made those trades. That would be dumb. They may have gotten worse (especially without ROR) but they're obviously not bottom 3rd bad.
 
In case anyone has subscribed to Cam, he goes over why he thinks the Leafs are struggling offensively. He notes that it has been a 10 game sample which is usually predictive of something other than random variance.

 
Outcome bias is a thing and I will for sure fall prey to it if they do indeed win. But outcomes are not always representative how calculated/intelligent the decisions were that led to the outcome. It ignores a whole bunch of factors out of their control.


With that said, just like every other year in the current Leafs era, they're good enough to win. We know this. They're not in the upper top 2-3 tier but you don't always have to be to win the cup. Top 5-7 is often enough.
 
They've been significantly worse statistically since the ROR deal.

But by xGF ROR, Acciari, Schenn have been their best players, and everyone else has kinda sucked. Gus, Lafferty and McCabe have really sucked.
 
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