• Moderators, please send me a PM if you are unable to access mod permissions. Thanks, Habsy.

The ****ing Pre-Season/Training Camp Thread (2019/20)

LeafOfFaith said:
I’m not shitting on you, though you were shitting on me back then. I just think it’s worth pointing out that sometimes an opinion is just an opinion.
Click to expand...

Yeah, and my opinion was based on what we knew at the time. Which was a long track record of being general shite. He was also the most obvious "wasted" cap space at the time. He's looked good in pre season though (Rielly has a tendency to make his partners look pretty good) and his strengths (puck moving) is a breath of fresh air on the right side given that we were rolling out two guys in our top 4 last year that couldn't make an exit pass.

Really early to say how good he actually is. He's not the unmitigated disaster that Zaitsev is, which I'll take for now.
 
MindzEye said:
Yeah, and my opinion was based on what we knew at the time. Which was a long track record of being general shite. He was also the most obvious "wasted" cap space at the time. He's looked good in pre season though (Rielly has a tendency to make his partners look pretty good) and his strengths (puck moving) is a breath of fresh air on the right side given that we were rolling out two guys in our top 4 last year that couldn't make an exit pass.

Really early to say how good he actually is. He's not the unmitigated disaster that Zaitsev is, which I'll take for now.
Click to expand...

I haven't been able to catch the preseason games, other than one so far, in which he played, so I don't even really have an opinion yet on him in a Leafs jersey. But you totally ruled out the possibility of this happening and were passing off opinion as absolute fact with me. But I hope he's looking great, and continues to do so.

I know we have a long window, but I think this is the most critical year within it (and that last year was a wasted opportunity with all the top seeds falling out early). This team is stacked to the nines, and there's probably no chance we have Barrie, Muzzin, and Ceci in the lineup next year. We might have only one of the three, so our D should be expected to take a hit, barring the emergence of Lilly, another great unexpected trade, etc. If we're going to win one, this is for sure the year to do it.
 
LeafOfFaith said:
I haven't been able to catch the preseason games, other than one so far, in which he played, so I don't even really have an opinion yet on him in a Leafs jersey. But you totally ruled out the possibility of this happening and were passing off opinion as absolute fact with me. But I hope he's looking great, and continues to do so.

I know we have a long window, but I think this is the most critical year within it (and that last year was a wasted opportunity with all the top seeds falling out early). This team is stacked to the nines, and there's probably no chance we have Barrie, Muzzin, and Ceci in the lineup next year. We might have only one of the three, so our D should be expected to take a hit, barring the emergence of Lilly, another great unexpected trade, etc. If we're going to win one, this is for sure the year to do it.
Click to expand...

He still might be shit and gets dragged to decent results by an elite partner. He's still probably not as good as Dermott (who I wanted to see as Rielly's partner), he's still definitely not getting re signed here, and he still might be a waste of 4.5 million.

But he's definitely way better than Zaitsev, and that will do for now.
 
Volcanologist said:
Ceci needs to do a lot more than look decent in a few preseason games to shed the Senator stink.
Click to expand...


Heh.

Have to admit, I've almost vomited in my mouth a couple of times when I've heard Spezza talking about how he learned from great leaders like "Alfie" and Wade Redden, and now he's looking to pay that forward as an older guy on this team.

That Senator stink don't wash off easy.
 
My thing on the advanced stats in general is that they lose relevance at the extremes of usage, and my thing on Ceci was always that he literally may have been in the very worst situation stats-wise of any defenseman in all of hockey for the past 2-3 years, no exaggeration.

And I still remember being impressed by Ceci as a prospect and in his first year or two.
 
Burke saying JT is the captain and the decision was made before any of the Matthews stuff went down
 
Brian Burke is really llosing it. Y'know how he said Matthew is gone in 5 years? Now he says Tavares will be captain first, but then they'll strip him I guess and give it to Matthews before he leaves.
Ramblings of a drunk man...
 
JackBurton said:
I do tend to believe that. The Marleau and Zaitsev trade requests were obviously leaked by the Leafs. They wanted both gone.
Click to expand...


I dunno. The Marleau trade request had some odour to it, but it could very well be true. His wife was born and raised in SoCal, as were all four of his kids, so it's not implausible at all that they all didn't want to spend another year away from all their family & friends.

You'd also think that even as bad as he was towards the end of next year, with his pedigree he would've caught on somewhere on a PTO at least if he was open to continuing his career somewhere outside of California.

As for the Zaitsev trade request, if that was a lie made up by the Leafs, then Zaitsev is pretty fiercely committed to that lie. And he was an offensive defenseman in the KHL, and had 36 points in his first NHL season when he was being force-fed 1st unit PP minutes. So it's not implausible he genuinely believes Babcock was screwing him over by sticking him in a purely defensive match-up/PK role the past two years.
 
I don't know if I buy the strategic "leaks" angle getting pushed right now. We went years running a tight as hell ship, with the media finding out shit at roughly the same time we do, and all of a sudden Steve Simmons knows shit again? He knows what Shanahan is thinking?

I don't doubt that these guys are sucking agent cock for info, but I don't buy this whole leaking angle.
 
They've certainly been leaking shit (Marner turning down $11X7, for example), but I would not trust one word that comes from Simmons. Lately? The guy has had a lifelong gig attacking Leafs management.
 
LeafGm said:
Heh.

Have to admit, I've almost vomited in my mouth a couple of times when I've heard Spezza talking about how he learned from great leaders like "Alfie" and Wade Redden, and now he's looking to pay that forward as an older guy on this team.

That Senator stink don't wash off easy.
Click to expand...
Oh boy, I knew there was a reason I didn't click on that story.
 
BeLeafer said:
The last two preseason games are b2b. I suspect the second last will be another Marlies prime time.
Click to expand...


Yep. Figured the same when I saw the schedule. No way they want the regulars all playing a back-to-back in the pre-season.

So the axe will probably be coming out first thing Saturday morning.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top