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No Excuses No Limits! The mother fucking goddamn season thread

zeke said:
Zeke early verdicts:

- Bertuzzi is good and will be good
- Domi and Klingberg will be fine in (completely) sheltered roles
- Reaves leaves us a line short, no matter how you rejig them. the only way to salvage this is to use his slot to double shift one of the big 4 for a bunch of shifts each game.


- Knies...well, you never know with kids. I hope he'll be fine and if not Robby is waiting for his shot.
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Yeah, this sounds right.
 
zeke said:
Zeke early verdicts:

- Bertuzzi is good and will be good
- Domi and Klingberg will be fine in (completely) sheltered roles
- Reaves leaves us a line short, no matter how you rejig them. the only way to salvage this is to use his slot to double shift one of the big 4 for a bunch of shifts each game.


- Knies...well, you never know with kids. I hope he'll be fine and if not Robby is waiting for his shot.
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Bertuzzi will be fine, but I'm not sure he's going to have any kind of break the bank season that he planned going into UFA. Unless he's actually been injured this whole time and he has a ton more to show.

Klingberg will be fine. He'll fill a need. McCabe's need is to apparently not play with him though. So keep them apart.

I have a feeling Domi is going to be a bad fit who doesn't work with anyone and doesn't produce anything. I'm predicting that if he's not any better at like game 15-20, they might trade him off for someone else who also isn't fitting in where they are, and see if a change of scenery works. He's been near unplayable so far imo.

Reaves is terrible and I don't know how they will be able to justify giving him a regular shift just for his intimidation factor.

Knies looks like he belongs. He's making good subtle plays. He's come close to scoring a few times. He's strong and wins most of the board battles. And he got inserted into the top 6 just as everyone, including Matty, went cold. As soon as they find their rhythm again, Knies will be contributing on the score sheet.

Minty looks like he needs more time to marinate. No knock on him. He'll be back.

Moves that make sense to me - flip Holmberg and Kampf, but otherwise those practice lines are good. Bring up Robertson and sit Reaves for a bit.
 
zeke said:
Knies --- Matthews --- Marner
Robertson --- Tavares --- Nylander
Bertuzzi --- Domi --- Jarnkrok
Gregor --- Kampf --- Holmberg/McMann​
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Every attempt to make Domi fit looks worse and worse. Him as 3C is pure yuck. He's not even hacking at on the wing.
 
leafman101 said:
Its pretty nonsensical to bench Minten halfway through his 9 game tryout based on performance. He is 2nd on the team in ixg/60, 5th in iCF/60, 8th in xGF%, 6th in xGA/60.

He's earned more ice time if anything.
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Eye test isn't seeing him do too much out there. But I also wouldn't be sitting him when Domi isn't even skating.
 
I think Domi will find his way. He's just playing nervous and tight. I think you gotta play him with some talent...JT should be a good fit. But keep him there a bit
 


Patrick O'Sullivan? The same guy that threw temper tantrums on the radio to that Andi Petrillo chick non-stop and couldn't manage to behave long enough to keep the gig for more than a few months? Weird.
 
A couple of takes 5gms in.....

- Keefe has a tough job at the start of each year with all the roster turnover, especially this year, but still there were two major decisions he made that imo were completely unnecessary and underserved. The first was deciding to play Klingberg as a top-pair dman, when every indication was that he would need sheltering at least until maybe he got comfortable, and when we had Lilly who has long deserved a look with real frontline minutes and still keefe had him as a sheltered #6 to start. The second was the decision to force Sammy into being a clearcut starter when he had never been that before, and when he had struggled badly to end last year, and when Woll had clearly outplayed him last year. Both these decisions were unnecessary and undeserved and didn't ever really make any sense. To Keefe's credit, just 5gms in he has already completely reversed course on both decisions but that also tells us that he didn't ever strongly believe in those decisions so there was even less reason to go so hard in those directions in the first place.

- Those two decisions are pretty clearly linked with the two clearest statistical weaknesses to start the year. Firstly that big minute McCabe-Klingberg pair almost singlehandedly torched the team nerdies. The team nerdies are decent so far overall (borderline top-10) but that comes with almost elite nerdies in most of the lineup and absolutely pathetic numbers for that pairing (and for the much lower minute 4th line). And secondly the goaltending has been bottom 5 in the league thanks to Sammy's .831.

- of course if the leafs continue to have a pair and/or line that's unplayably bad and get near league-worst goaltending then they'll be in a bit of trouble, but the good news is that the Klingberg-Liljegren swap has already paid huge dividends, and that imo as long as Keefe stays flexible with his goalies there's no reason for these tandem to be amongst the league's worst.


It's impossible to make clear conclusions here but the team nerdies have obviously been much much better since the Klingberg-Liljegren swap, and the biggest changes in player performance since that swap have been the turnaround in Mccabe and Klingberg's numbers specifically, so there's plenty of reason to believe that was the culprit.

Team Stats

First 3gms: 51.1xgf% (#17), 3.22xgf/60 (#6), 3.08xga/60 (#26)
Last 2gms: 58.1xgf% (#5), 3.27xgf/60 (#6), 2.35xga/60 (#11)

Bottom-4 Dmen xgf% in order of TOI

First 3gms: McCabe 36.4%, Klingberg 39.9%, Liljegren 58.3%, Giordano 57.2%
Last 2gms: Liljegren 64.8%, McCabe 59.6%, Klingberg 73.0%, Giordano 52.8%

Suddenly there's no black hole pairing and the team nerdies have shot up into top-5 territory.

and the last 2gms were arguably against much tougher opponents than the first 3gms (acknowledging that TB has been pretty poor to start this year tho).
 
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I guess we should let Domi-Knies try to continue that chemsitry. I doubt keefe keeps willy on the top line from the start of games but at the same time Bertuzzi might need the switch. And i'd like to see how he and Tavares mesh down low. Good news is that Jarnkrok has looked good with every line so far.

Jarnkrok --- Matthews --- Marner
Bertuzzi --- Tavares --- Nylander
Knies --- Kampf --- Domi
Gregor --- Holmberg --- Reaves
​
never gonna love Kampf on the 3rd line but if the rest of the top 9 there is producing, including his two wingers, it's not a disaster having a defensive C in the top 9. Would be great if Holmberg could make a play for that spot tho.
 
Top-4 F: 13gls, 27pts (43gl/111pt avg pace)
Mid-4 F: 3gls, 9pts (17gl/30pt avg pace)
Bot-4 F: 1gls, 2pts (3gl/7pt avg pace)
Defense: 0gls, 9pts (0gl/25pt avg pace)
 
Mid-4 pace isnt bad now. Hopefully that bumps up closer to a 40pt avg pacd tho.

The Bot-4 pace is no bueno. Got to get those guys around a 20pt pace.

Some goals from the D would be nice.
 
Although he hasn't scored yet, it's another reason I prefer to keep Klingy.

He's kind of good for around 10 goals generally. Every dman who played for us last year combined to score 23 goals.
 
It would be pretty damn funny to see JT finish the season as a top 5 scorer.

We have a bunch of money tied up in junk. Sammy, Jarnkrok, Klingberg could all go.
 
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