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GDT #8: 2024/10/24 TOR v STL: Berube's Revenge

Love it, Leafs can't go a month without finding some ridiculous record to break. Embarrassing, as usual.
 
No, no, no. This is clearly a winning formula and I want no changes.

If anything, play the 4th line more, have someone cripple Lilly so he can't come back, and keep all the lines together.
 
Idk wtf you do with Marner.

Ask him what markets he would accept a trade to. If he tries to be a dipshit about it and refuse to leave, I don't see how you can do anything but let him walk at the end of the year. We're past the point where there's any "potential" left there, he is what he is. He's a really good point producer and a top 5-10 RW in the league but he probably wants to be paid like a top 5 player in the league again. If you give him the money he wants (12.5+ or whatever he wants) you're placing a bet on him being the type of guy you can have in a winning core and I just don't think he is. This isn't the Kessel situation where Phil was alone on an island being blamed for the team going nowhere while Tyler Bozak fed him pucks on the 1st line. He's been fucking blessed with elite talent around him since the day he arrived in the league. We're already locked into the Cock and Willy, take the 22 million in cap space and don't fuck it up.
 
50.3%

Knies 11:18, 35.0% (-0.44) --- Matthews 13:12, 24.2% (-0.76) --- Marner 13:18, 23.3% (-0.59)
McMann 12:12, 63.2% (+0.08) --- Domi 14:06, 80.2% (+0.28) --- Nylander 13:00, 49.7% (-0.01)
Lorentz 11:24, 64.4% (+0.19) --- Tavares 10:48, 64.1% (+0.30) --- Robertson 14:06, 63.3% (+0.23)
Holmberg 10:30, 83.4% (+0.38) --- Kampf 10:48, 83.4% (+0.38) --- Reaves 9:48, 83.4% (+0.38)

OEL 16:18, 67.3% (+0.49) --- Rielly 17:30, 64.9% (+0.46)
McCabe 18:18, 45.6% (-0.13) --- Tanev 17:17, 50.6% (+0.01)
Benoit 14:06, 40.5% (-0.14) --- Timmins 14:00, 30.3% (-0.28)

And M&M were on for 4 of the 5 goals against. They killed us this game in every way.


An absolute disgrace from M&M against an awful team.

Did either of them have the balls to speak to the media postgame?
 
Idk wtf you do with Marner. I guess you have to pay him whatever he wants
No. We should have dumped him for nothing over the offseason to break up the core. Now we'll dump him for nothing on July 1st but after wasting another year of AM. We'd seen enough of this group.

Having said that, this is not the way things will go. They'll pick it up and then go back to who there were in the playoffs.
 
Ask him what markets he would accept a trade to. If he tries to be a dipshit about it and refuse to leave, I don't see how you can do anything but let him walk at the end of the year. We're past the point where there's any "potential" left there, he is what he is. He's a really good point producer and a top 5-10 RW in the league but he probably wants to be paid like a top 5 player in the league again. If you give him the money he wants (12.5+ or whatever he wants) you're placing a bet on him being the type of guy you can have in a winning core and I just don't think he is. This isn't the Kessel situation where Phil was alone on an island being blamed for the team going nowhere while Tyler Bozak fed him pucks on the 1st line. He's been fucking blessed with elite talent around him since the day he arrived in the league. We're already locked into the Cock and Willy, take the 22 million in cap space and don't fuck it up.
Dammit, I never entertained the idea of trading him, and I'm still not, but this is the first time the thought is creeping into my head that the core needs a shake up, that he's the logical candidate to go based on both money and performance and lack of contract, but...

1) We for sure will get burned by him going and winning elsewhere. No question about it.

2) He will get 100 points a year wherever he goes.

3) I don't know who the fuck you replace him with since it's never easy just nabbing an equivalent superstar for just money as a UFA- and not just equivalent but better, and someone who "has what it takes to win".

4) As soon as he's gone, we're going to be complaining that we have no one to feed Matthews, and will be searching till the end of his career for a Marner-type who "has what it takes to win".

5) The cancer might be Matthews or Nylander, and we won't know until after Marner's gone.

All of which again pulls me back to saying fuck it and just play it out to the end with this core. Either they figure it out or they don't. But what aggravates the fuck out of me is that we have never, ever, ever, ever, ever, iced the best roster around these guys. Not that we didn't assemble it, but that we refuse to play the best players, and dump or bury the worst ones. There is always a Simmonds, or Reaves, or ZAR, or Kampf, or Baboon, or Edmonkey, or whoever, you name it, who fucking stinks, and who is our KEY role player or defensive depth. We never actually know what our best iced team looks like for more than a game or two in a season.

We also had one failed flameout former fatboy player as our last coach, losers before him, and now a career goon in a suit after him. Just fucking terrible. We got the most in demand psycho coach in Babcock, won the lottery with our draft picks, and looked a year or two away from a cup, and somehow the whole thing went straight to shit and we've got one playoff round over eight fucking years to show for it, and this utter shitshow of the last couple of games to get us to think about what punishment we're in store for next.
 



Didn’t realize that unsexy Nylander had five goals in five games with the Marlies.

Wasn’t impressed by him in camp, but those are intriguing numbers. Especially when combined with him getting 11 goals & 15 points in 23 games to end last season with Columbus.

Though they’d need to sign him to an NHL deal. And once they do, they can’t send him back to the Marlies without putting him through waivers.
 
1) He's shown literally no reason to believe he's going to go somewhere else and win and I seriously question if you can win with him taking up 12-13 million of your payroll without some massive cap efficiencies elsewhere in your lineup, like star level players on their ELC.

2) Who fucking cares? Let him soak up all of the easy regular season points he can eat. Couldn't give a fuck.

3) You don't need one player to replace him with. You're unlikely to get the same regular season impact out of a replacement player, but if can get a winger worth 8-9 million and then spread the other 3-4 million around, it's probably a better cap distribution than spending 12-13 million on a pass first winger. The only time I've seen a small, soft, pass first winger be a core piece for a winner is Patrick Kane, and Mitch is no fucking Patrick Kane.

4) Nah, we won't. Matthews played at the same goal pace with Domi as he did with Marner. Matthews isn't dependent on Marner to score goals at an elite level.

5) lol
 
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