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The Mother****ing Off Season Thread

That's some excellent work LeafGm. That is exactly what I hope we see this offseason. Take advantage of our financial muscle. Hopefully Marleau plays ball.

Zaitsev and Brown gotta go as well. Those should be easier moves.

Kapanen - Matthews - Nylander
Johnsson - Tavares - Marner
Moore - Kadri - Bracco
Korshkov - Goat - xxxx(Marchment?)

Rielly - Xxxx
Muzzin - Xxxx
Rosen - Xxxx

To start the season with Dermott and Hyman out. I think Liljegren makes the team out of camp. Hopefully Dubas is able to find another quality top 4 defender. Ideally a true long term partner for Rielly.
 
It still makes by far the most sense to move Rielly over to the right (whether he wants to or not) - his skillseet should translate there no problem, and he's looked good there whenever it's been tried.

I'm very interested to see whether they try to make this happen from the start of the year next year - imo it will be pretty telling as to whether dubas or babcock is winning the power struggle.
 
I guess it depends on how the rest of the defense shakes out. Dermott out until Christmas possibly. Do they keep Sandin down? What the status for expansion draft protection? Do we want to spread out Muzzin and Rielly on different pairings to have a vet with a younger guy? We won't have Gardiner anymore. We missed the boat this season to keep Muzzin and Rielly together.

Preferably we find a top 4 RHD to slot in with Rielly. I think his game goes up another level with a better partner.
 
LeafGm said:
Thanks, I stumbled across that earlier this year when someone around here suggested Orpik'ing Marleau as an option, and I did some research into buyouts.

I'm hoping Dubas has something like that in mind and is able to pull it off. Because like you say, we'd probably be forced to lose a good player if we can't make all or most of Marleau's cap his next season disappear. On the upside, I don't think it'd be too difficult to find new homes for Zaitsev & Brown without taking money back.

But even that would make it a pretty tight squeeze to just bring all our current guys back (minus Hainsey & Gardiner). And it'd also leave you with a pretty lean, inexperienced defense core after Rielly & Muzzin, especially with Dermott out to start the year. That's why clearing that Marleau space to give us that breathing room is so important.
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There has to have been be some contingency in place, otherwise the 3rd year made no sense at all given it went past when the big 3 had to be signed. Everybody and their dog could see that.
 
Preston said:
Burtch has a better understanding of numbers. He's just a contrarian and yeah... Also doesn't fully grasp the game at times. Wheeler went to journalism school with no background in hockey. I'm just a bit confused that the athletic chose him as the guy who analyzes hockey players. He comes up with some bizarre explanations of some pretty basic techniques (ie. Wrist shots).

He watches a lot of hockey and "scouts" a lot but that doesn't make him smart. If he did an analysis on their stats or simply discussed objective things I'd appreciate him a hell of a lot more. But I can't say I respect or value his knowledge of the sport at all. Journalism school doesn't make you understand hockey unfortunately.
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yeah Wheeler is unbearable. I usually just automatically skip all his stuff now.
 
Volcanologist said:
There has to have been be some contingency in place, otherwise the 3rd year made no sense at all given it went past when the big 3 had to be signed. Everybody and their dog could see that.
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You'd hope so.

But Lou and Babcock were likely the ones driving the bus on that signing, so maybe not.
 
Lou is brutal on veteran signings. The amount this guy pays for supporting guys and how many years he gives is stupid.
 
Looks like Jim Hiller is gonezo. He's a terrific pp coach that has had tremendous success and was somewhat revolutionary to how teams construct their PP's these days. He got a bad rep here this season but that's a bit of recency bias. He's a good one. Nashville wants him which makes sense. They likely would love to fix their broken pp.

Doesn't hurt for the leafs to get some fresh ideas in the mix anyway.

DJ Smith may also be gonezo. I'd love to see him gone. May depend on if the sens or oilers hire him as a head coach. Seems crazy to me but who knows.
 
Good to see some accountability with the coaching.

Whether Babcock chooses to admit it or not, any assistant changes are an indictment on him.

The Leafs special teams need to go back to the drawing board for next year. I know Matthews for one will appreciate some fresh schemes on the powerplay. He remarked at one point they were doing the same plays over and over and I'd have to agree. The penalty killing is at least in part a deployment issue(ie refusing to use Tavares to win faceoffs in our zone), but a below average special teams result isn't acceptable on a team aspiring to win a title. I don't mind making a change there either in the least.
 
Hiller may have been a power-play genius at some point, but I don't know what the hell he was doing this year. Our PP was far less than the sum of its parts all year. And I don't know if it was strictly a Hiller thing, a Babcock thing or both that every two minutes has to be split as evenly as possible between the first and second power-play units, but that idea needs to be killed dead.
 
Our PP produced an insane rate of scoring chances though. That may just be the talent, but it also may have been a great system that suffered from unsustainably low shooting percentage.

S% was 12.3 this year (20th in the NHL), but they lead the league in CF/60 (+6 over #2) and xGF/60 (+1.5). They were even better the year before, but they had a 14.36 S%.
 
We have, legitimately and with no exaggeration, two of the top goalscorers and one of the very best playmakers in all of hockey at our disposal.

There is no reason we shouldn't have the top powerplay in the league or at least be nipping at Tampa's heels.
 
I read somewhere the theory behind Boston's PP..... Old school coaches as well, Is that there is no general structure. They have it so that within the first few seconds of being in the zone or the faceoff is to get a shot at the net and then let the creativity take over from the scramble. By setting up first you allow the defense set up... but getting that shot off quickly causes the breakdown of structure from the defense and then allows for the individual players talent take over on offense with the extra space.
 
leafman101 said:
Our PP produced an insane rate of scoring chances though. That may just be the talent, but it also may have been a great system that suffered from unsustainably low shooting percentage.

S% was 12.3 this year (20th in the NHL), but they lead the league in CF/60 (+6 over #2) and xGF/60 (+1.5). They were even better the year before, but they had a 14.36 S%.
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but the PP might be where scoring chance metrics really struggle, because the key to the PP is forcing the goalie (and defenders) to move from side to side and i'm not sure our PP was actually great at that, even if they technically created a bunch of shots from high danger areas.

for me the bottom line is that you cant ever afford to be married to a system so strictly. any system, no matter how good, will get solved eventually.

its crazy that the first real change they made in the PP came in the very last PP of the season, where suddenly Matthews fired off 4-5 dangerous one timers from his off wing in like 30 seconds.
 
With all our talent were imo missing a legit point shot. Or I should say we're missing the one- timer from the PP. I think having a bomb one timer from the top would open things up. Rielly is great just doesn't have that slapper.

I'd really like to see:
Matthews - Tavares - Marner
Rielly - Muzzin(or someone with a better shot)

As the top PP.

Kap - Kadri - Nylander
Dermott - Xxxx( Liljegren?)

As the 2nd unit that sees maybe he last 30ish seconds.
 
I dunno. I don't think the big slap-shot from the point is really a "thing" anymore. That shot always gets blocked now.

There's more value in someone who's able to get their shot off quickly and get it through.
 
It's also the threat of the shot that has value in opening the ice. Not just the shot itself. When the defender needs to cut off the top then the side( Marner) has more ice to operate.
 
Nashville's power play has tonnes of great options from the point, yet they were horrible on the PP as well this year.
 
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