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GDT #1: 12/10/2022, 7:00 PM (SNO) - No more Soups, it's Geno and Murr-time

leafman101 said:
Last year in the playoffs, the bottom 3 Leafs forwards in GA/60 were Simmonds, Kase and Blackwell. The 4th line was brutal. 3 goals against is a lot in a series we lost by 1 game.
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on paper, Kase/Blackwell/Spezza is as talented a 4th line as you want to see. But in the end, Kase was a nonentity after coming back from injury, Blackwell wasn't a center, and Spezza was toast.
 
leafman101 said:
I think the impact of the new 4th line is being overlooked.

We are going from one of the worst 4th lines in the league that had to be sheltered and was basically unplayable, to one of the best, that can play in any situation against anyone, and shut things down.

Thats only 8-10 mins a game, but its 8-10 mins a game that nothing will happen and Keefe doesn't have to worry about, as opposed to the Leafs getting destroyed.
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Looking forward to that for sure, but I don’t think we can blame any playoffs loss on our fourth line. So that doesn’t move the needle for my cup aspirations. Another elite forward is the way.
 
leafman101 said:
Last year in the playoffs, the bottom 3 Leafs forwards in GA/60 were Simmonds, Kase and Blackwell. The 4th line was brutal. 3 goals against is a lot in a series we lost by 1 game.
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We didn’t lose it because of them. That a way to paint it to scapegoat them, but we need Matty and Marner production. It begins and ends there.
 
leafman101 said:
"Losing because of" is irrelevant. Its a big improvement in one of the few areas of weakness on the team, that makes the team better.
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That's why I'm not against it obviously. But the 4th line isn't going to see much ice when we're either up or down a goal in game 7.

I tend to like to address the major problem first and then get to the secondary stuff. And the major problem has gone unaddressed for years. Arguably it's justified because it's just a matter of your best players playing their best, and you can't fix that, you just have to hope. But you can add another best player to the bunch to enhance your odds.
 
I mean, we have this conversation going for six years now, but the common denominator for me is that our 100 point players become 0 point players in elimination games. If that one thing corrects, literally almost anything else gets washed over by it.
 
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