Wayward DP
Well-known member
Both teams played last night.
Holtby vs McElhinney
Go Buds
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Holtby vs McElhinney
Go Buds
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Love the mentality and composure he brings and the credibility he has brought to the franchise. But tactically, I am starting to have serious doubts about Babcock. Just too many head scratching lineup decisions, especially this year when teams are starting to bear down and scheme for our team.
He has to step up big time. Regardless of our record, he's not getting the best out of our talent thus far in the year.
Who do you think would be a better fit at this point?
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I think one of the problems fans are having is Babcock and co. might still be in learn-mode...they might think the team is a couple years away from the real thing, so he may do things that are long-view...and of course, he can also be wrong now and again.
I even think some of the line-up decisions are trade-based, even if those trades are months away.
This sounds like GLG with Quinn.
It's that Babcock deserves some blame for the team playing like crap ever since the first two weeks in October. The team has been playing Carlyle-type hockey and if not for Freddy, we could easily have gone 1-7-1 instead of the very fortunate 7-1-1 run we have been on. And it just seems that the team gets outworked every single night, which is not in keeping with what these guys showed last year.
What does playing Tyler Bozak, Roman Polak, Dominic Moore, and Matt Martin have to do with having a "long-view"?
+1
It's one thing to complain about getting completely outplayed against Carolina...that was ****ing ugly. But a bunch of games over the last few weeks where we've severely out chanced the opposition, I see people complaining about about us getting outplayed (because we didn't dominate in all areas of the game or something...I don't ****ing know) and now Babcock is in question? We're still one of the youngest teams in the league, comfortably in the top 10 in the standings, with the analytics saying that we absolutely deserve to be there. We've seen other teams with comparable groups of young talent struggle over the last couple of years and here we are a legitimate threat in the East with the entire core 20-26 years old.
In the 4 games before the Carolina game (Panthers, Yotes, Habs, Devils) we out chanced our opposition in all 4 games (104-72) and shit stomped in high danger chances (48-21). That's about as dominant as you can ask a team to be. Some people's eye tests are way the **** out of calibration. Walking out of that 4 game set with 5 out of 8 points is unlucky...not the opposite, which I've seen suggested on here.
Yeah, it's frustrating watching them sleepwalk the first 5-10 minutes of the 1st every night and yeah that's something that needs to be addressed but on the whole, we've been very good this year. This is what a 105+ point team looks like in today's parity driven NHL. The improvements we want to see are what will take us from being very good, to elite. The level of despair in some of the post I've seen over the last 2 weeks is a bit silly.
Name 1 team in the NHL that Tyler Bozak should be a health scratch on.
Keep in mind that I've been one of the most vocal critics of his on here over the years....but again we're working our way into delusional territory here.
You are going to actually imply that we outplayed the Yotes, Devils and Panthers in those games?
We may have had a good 10-15 minute stretch the in the 3rd period of those games, but nobody with any sense of objectivity is going to imply that we were the better team in those games.
Putting the Habs game in there also further skews these numbers. They are a train wreck and were the only team we really deserved to beat in recent weeks.
I'm not implying it. I'm flat out saying it. If I had to guess, I'd say that you're putting way too much value on opposition teams controlling the puck around the outside of our defensive zone and our inability to do that for extended stretches. Because when it comes to the important battle within the game, controlling the puck in the actual danger areas where goals are scored from, we wiped out the Panthers and Yotes. It wasn't close and both teams were only close for the reason you're accusing the Leafs of relying on (which is truly hilarious considering how bad Freddy was until a few weeks ago)...goaltending. Raanta and Luongo were lights out against us. That's the NHL though, sometimes your goalie just does that (which if you remember, is exactly what I was saying when Freddy was struggling...sometimes a goalie just covers up enough mistakes to be the difference in a game)
The heat maps and shot charts aren't lying. We own the high danger areas against our opposition on most nights. This is why we're pacing at 105+ points on the season. You're just putting value in the wrong things imo.
If we weren't the better team, why did we have way more scoring chances in high danger areas? What exactly does the better team look like if it's not the guys taking triple the amount of shot attempts from the highest percentage scoring areas of the ice?
Again, I think your eye test is badly, badly out of calibration. The first 2 periods of that Habs game was some of the most even hockey we've played over the last 2 weeks. The habs inability to finish good chances was the story in that game (before their collapse after we scored a couple...)