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The ****ing Season Thread 2018-19

My fav is still Friedman boasting in his 31 thoughts a GM said he'd bet his house Lou will offersheet a Leafs player as "Revenge". Within 24 hours Lou saved the Leafs millions in cap by trading for Martin.
Gord Miller pulled a different "A GM Bet Me..."(Some vintage alcohol bottle I can't recall the name of) At least one of Marner/Matthews signs an offersheet last week on the radio.

These GMS they talk to are morons.

It's probably people like Waddell. Bottom of the barrel shit GMs.
 
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No way the Leafs don't match 3 year deals at reasonable dollar amounts for Kappy/Johnsson. Thats just stupid.

For the Leafs to have to think about it you need to be talking about $5-6 milliion+.
 
Friedman relaxed on the stance this week and quoted one GM saying are you sure you want to be on the wrong end of revenge
 
LeafOfFaith said:
Wow. I googled it and there were some surprising ones I either didn’t remember or never knew.

Calgary on Selanne. STL on McSorley. STL on Nedved. STL on Corson. (Somebody really liked doing it there obviously). Chicago on Tkachuk. Yes, Philly on Gratton. Philly on Kesler. Edmonton on Penner.

Nothing since Calgary on ROR in 2013.
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Burke put the picks together to basically force the Kessel trade from Boston.
 
JackBurton said:
That was weird. It wasn't like he asked and the Bruins said no. He admitted he didn't try it.
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It all came down to pride for Burke, and his own Byzantine personal code of ethics.

He paid the extra first round pick in a trade instead of going the offer sheet route because in his mind, actually signing a player to an offer sheet was dirty pool, but using the threat of one to force a trade wasn't.

And then he didn't want to ask for lottery protection because that'd be tantamount to admitting to Chiarelli that there was even the remotest possibility that his Leaf team wasn't as good as he thought it was.
 
LeafOfFaith said:
And no lottery protection because he thought of it but just didn’t think he needed to.

Brilliant ****ing guy.
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This was really his only massive transgression in that deal imo.....on paper, at the time of the deal, he still won it. But not including protection when you likely could have?

Inexcusable.
 
Not sure how you can say on paper he won the deal.

We very predictably would've finished with a high draft pick, and he gave them two years' worth.

He paid more than he would've with an offer sheet that they clearly wouldn't have matched.

You can say maybe they would've matched, but that's hard to believe. He was done in Boston and they were happy to take picks in return. And you can say that a 1st isn't worth the same as a bird in hand, or even two 1sts aren't, but from the team's perspective, a dumpster fire with no centers and no pipeline, adding a great young winger wasn't going to do shit for our fortunes. It was a bad deal all around.
 
If you're having the argument in a vacuum, without the benefit of any context, then sure, you can definitely argue that trading a couple of 1st rounders for a 22-year old who's gone on to be one of the very best offensive players in the league since the trade is a "win".

But you really do have to take the context into consideration, don't you? For example, in the best possible outcome of the Kessel trade for Toronto, we would've gotten competent goaltending and the Leafs would've either been a middle-of-the-pack playoff team that would have given up a couple of middling first round picks to Boston.

My questions is...and then what? What was the path to turning that Leaf team into a contender? How were they going to find any more high-end talent to supplement Phil?

In terms of potential impact young players on the roster or in the system, they had Kadri & Schenn at the time, but that was about it. Our top-3 centers were Stajan-Grabbo-Mitchell (with "free wallet" Tyler Bozak starting that season on the Marlies). Our defense was led by a 31 year-old Tomas Kaberle & a 29 year-old Francois Beauchemin.

So it wasn't exactly like adding Phil as the final piece when the bones of a contender of a contender were already in place.
 
The Bruins were unfathomably lucky.....a handful of wins the other way, and they end up with Erik Gudbranson, and Jonas Brodin for Phil Kessel.

They got whooped on pure...day of the trade value (the only thing it can objectively be based on......if you trade Wendel Clark for a 7th rounder, that one day becomes Henrik Zetterberg, you didn't "win" the trade, you just got lucky).


The Bruins got lucky......full stop.
 
I'm with Montana here. the probability that the picks we traded to the Bruins would turn into the players they did was infinitesimally small
 
Well...the best case scenario was that Burke put top 10 protection on those picks and we ran out a team of:

JVR-Seguin-Kessel
MacA-Grabo-Kulemin
Kadri-Bozak-Versteeg

Phaneuf-Hamilton
Kaberle

Team for a bunch of years. It doesn't win a Cup, but it's probably pretty ****ing good and a solid platform to build a contender from. With full 20/20 hindsight in place, I'm not even mad because this collection of talent >> that collection of talent, but that best case scenario on the Kessel situation is miles, miles better than it turned into initially.

So yeah, the picks would have been pushed back to the Rielly & Gauthier drafts (but there's almost no chance that team lands high enough to pick Rielly in what was a pretty tragic draft). So if we were giving away 20th overalls in both years, it would have been something like Kessel for Laughton/Jankowski/Maatta, Mantha/Goat/Poirier, and Jared Knight.

As much as the goaltending ****ery sunk us that season, you put top 10 protection on those picks and it becomes pretty moot.
 
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Well yeah, it's a gamechanger if the picks were protected.

That way, you finish low and keep your high 1sts, you get your stud kids and win the deal laughing, because you got Kessel, Seguin, and Hamilton. And if you finish middle of the pack, they get some lesser lottery tickets that likely don't amount to anything. Everyone would've been on board with that.

It's losing the two high 1sts, one of which you didn't even have to lose if you offer sheeted, and all because of some idiot pride or overconfidence.
 
Eh, maybe Bruins got fortunate, but Burke really thought he was building a top D adding Beachemin+Komisarek (That makes his criticism of Nylander getting 6.9 million hilarious) and he believed Toskala was a top goalie.
This guy mis-read the entire team so badly.
 
Leaf line rushes today:

Hyman-Tavares-Marner
Johnsson-Matthews-Kapanen
Marleau-Kadri-Nylander
Ennis-Lindholm-Brown

Rielly -Hainsey
Gardiner-Zaitsev
Dermott-Ozhiganov
#LeafsForever⁠ ⁠
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From today
 
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