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The Fantastically Beautiful Joyously Superfun 22-23 Season Celebration Thread

I mean, call up pretty much anyone at this point. Engvall, Yarncock, Aston-Reese & Malgin have all looked useless in the bottom-6, so what’s the harm?
 
Something I'm a bit stuck on right now is that graphic that got posted last night, with the Leafs being 24th in rush chances allowed. Which is kind of terrible given that rush chances tend to be pretty high quality (2-1s with a cross ice pass are the highest quality shot in all of hockey, and score roughly 50% of the time). I get that this is a function of how we play with the defenders encouraged to pinch, pinch, and pinch some more and also to carry the puck down the boards themselves rather than dump it down to the forwards.

But....

Our defenders have scored 4 goals all season now so this isn't translating into offensive value, but is costing us high quality rush chances in high volumes going the other way. That's a tactical decision that just isn't paying off. We're tied with Montreal for dead last in the east in goals from the blueline and only Anaheim has fewer in the entire league. If we're not emphasizing offence from the blueline for the sake of defensive play...then cool, but that's not the case. No one emphasizing defensive play is 24th in the league in rush chances allowed.
 
It was a style that helped them create chances more than almost every other NHL team but yeah, not anymore.

Kyle had an opportunity to get creative and revamp the non core guys but he decided to keep kerfoot's salary and sign another older, worse kerfoot (with embarrassing career playoff numbers) for 4 years. That was it. That's how he dealt with their depth after losing Mikheyev. Still fucking flabbergasted at that.
 
Preston said:
It was a style that helped them create chances more than almost every other NHL team but yeah, not anymore.

Kyle had an opportunity to get creative and revamp the non core guys but he decided to keep kerfoot's salary and sign another older, worse kerfoot (with embarrassing career playoff numbers) for 4 years. That was it. That's how he dealt with their depth after losing Mikheyev. Still fucking flabbergasted at that.
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We're spending 7.7 million on Kerfoot-Jarnkrok-Engvall and have received 4 5v5 goals this season for it. So think about that for a second, what is basically our defacto 3rd line and our entire blueline has scored 8 goals in 18 games so far this season.

This is a combination of bad roster moves and bad tactics imo.
 
Preston said:
It was a style that helped them create chances more than almost every other NHL team but yeah, not anymore.

Kyle had an opportunity to get creative and revamp the non core guys but he decided to keep kerfoot's salary and sign another older, worse kerfoot (with embarrassing career playoff numbers) for 4 years. That was it. That's how he dealt with their depth after losing Mikheyev. Still fucking flabbergasted at that.
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I notice you forget to mention the chance to trade obvious future, and now current, albatross Muzz.
 
Safe GMing. Keeping Kerf and doubling down by signing another Kerf with the last bit of cap space just screams a GM falling in love with familiarity. Kyle was supposed to be a bit more bold than that.

Don't get me wrong, they should still be playing way better than this but it didn't feel like a gm who was trying to improve the roster necessarily

And yeah no need to fall in love with any coach; they all have shelf lives. The fresh new look that Keefe brought in after Babcock left was refreshing. Maybe they can do that again.
 
LeafOfFaith said:
I notice you forget to mention the chance to trade obvious future, and now current, albatross Muzz.
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I didn't want to trade him because as you can currently see, their d clearly misses a guy like him when he was at his best.

But yes, in hindsight knowing that he's dead now, trading him in a cap dump move would have been nice as long as it wouldn't have cost them much to unload him.
 
Preston said:
I didn't want to trade him because as you can currently see, their d clearly misses a guy like him when he was at his best.
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eh....did we really miss him until Brodie got hurt though?

Preston said:
But yes, in hindsight knowing that he's dead now, trading him in a cap dump move would have been nice as long as it wouldn't have cost them much to unload him.
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He didn't die this year mate. He's been a zombie for a bit now.
 
Part of it is they don't have a ton of prospects from the 2017-2019 drafts that were knocking down the door, so they had to bring in depth playersin free agency. And every year there are some successes (Kampf, Kase, Spezza, Malgin), but they are usually duds (Vesey, Ritchie, Gaudette, Boyd, Amadio, ZAR, Jarnkrok).

We just saw the best offensive team in the league at the moment, and they are 4 lines deep, but they are all players they drafted (Wood, Mercer, Zetterlund, Bastian, Sharangovich, Boqvist, McLeod, plus the studs). You aren't finding 4-5 players like that in free agency for less than $1 mill.

Gotta give the kids a shot, and at the deadline good players are affordable if they don't work out.

But right now Steeves, SDA and Anderson are killing it, so they've earned it.
 
Preston said:
Safe GMing. Keeping Kerf and doubling down by signing another Kerf with the last bit of cap space just screams a GM falling in love with familiarity. Kyle was supposed to be a bit more bold than that.

Don't get me wrong, they should still be playing way better than this but it didn't feel like a gm who was trying to improve the roster necessarily

And yeah no need to fall in love with any coach; they all have shelf lives. The fresh new look that Keefe brought in after Babcock left was refreshing. Maybe they can do that again.
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I'm not sure how much Keefe's personal wishlist played in to the off season decisions...but yeah, glasses fucked up with roster construction and Keefe has been much better than Babcock, but I don't think it can be argued that he's gotten more out of any of his rosters than the sums of their parts or anything.
 
Preston said:
Sorta. The thesis was that Raz could step in to replace him. He has not done that.
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to be faiiiir...that was one of multiple theses on the subject. Brodie to matchup pair was brought up and that worked lovely. Gio to help carry the load was brought up and Gio is pretty fucking good still, etc.

Lots of options without Muzz...and that's of course without punting on him in the summer like we should have and having the cap space to spend on another defender (which is what I was suggesting)
 
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