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The Official 2026 Off-Season Thread: Revenge of the Nerds

the leafs get a bit of an artificial boost in the ranking there because the end of season roster didn't include Roy or Laughton - not that they were very good or anything, but they were much better than whoever the fill-ins were (jarnkrok/groulx/quillan etc.).

So some of the forward additions are being considered upgrades on the likes of jarnkrok/groulx/quillan, when they likely wouldn't be over Roy/Laughton.
 
Yeah I'm not counting on much of an upgrade on the bottom six last year. Yeah Jarnkrok and Domi are additions by subtraction but they may have added guys who are similarly shit by the doms.

Hiller, Raddysh and McKenna are enormous upgrades tho if all goes well. And the additions by subtraction on d are monumental as well. Those things alone are franchise altering even if the rest of the roster is a wash.

Goaltending is expensive and probably shit but if the team is realgud, goaltending isn't a major factor. They can compensate for that.
 
I think that's also why Nashville ends up in #1 spot. They traded away all of Bunting, McCarron, Smith, Blankenberg, Stastney at the deadline and i think filled those slots with crappy ahlers, so most of the new adds are being measured against the crappy ahlers, not against the guys they had in those roles most of the season.

I don't think Dom does this list right.

At least in our case, tho, we did legit have absolute crap filling tons of minutes for much of the year, so most of that upgrade is legit.
 
zeke said:
I think that's also why Nashville ends up in #1 spot. They traded away all of Bunting, McCarron, Smith, Blankenberg, Stastney at the deadline and i think filled those slots with crappy ahlers, so most of the new adds are being measured against the crappy ahlers, not against the guys they had in those roles most of the season.

I don't think Dom does this list right.
Click to expand...

If true, he seems strangely oblivious given his comment:

If you’re surprised by Nashville landing in the top spot, that makes two of us
 
then again, i might be overstating things.

last year net rating pace from hockeystatcards.com:

Bunting -4.3
Blankenberg -6.0
Stastney -6.1
McCarron -7.9
Smith -8.3

so it's not like these guys were good or anything. still, if the guys who replaced even a couple of these guys were legit pure crap -10 or worse types, then that could swing their 'improvement' from +27 down to the teens pretty quickly.
 
Feels like the assessment was a ChatGPT summary of the collective of comments here. And if the downside risk of what they did is so obvious to everyone, it feels they tried to galaxy brain things a bit. But I do think there’s a good shot they do come out looking like the smartest guy in the room because there are so many potential impact adds, and as pointed out, the subtractions are big in and of themselves.
 
It's annoying i can't filter hockeystatcards.com to see just what the players contributed to the leafs and not the total after they were traded too, but let's look.

Last year actual total net rating from hockeystatcards.com ---> last year's rating plus last year's preseason projection paced to 82gms

Note that the 2nd set of stats is for a mostly healthy full season, so you might want to subtract some of that projection and replace it with sub-replacement level replacements too.


Matthews +11.84 ---> Matthews +21.0
Nylander +9.27 ---> Nylander +12.5
Knies +1.54 ---> Knies +5.1

Tavares +8.13 ---> +9.4
McMann +1.01* --> McKenna ?
Maccelli +0.10 ---> Roslovic -1.4

Laughton -2.99* --> Paul -5.3
Cowan -1.88 ---> Cowan -2.3
Joshua -2.02 ---> Joshua -5.1

Roy -6.07* ---> Sissons -7.8
Robertson -4.62 ---> Blueger -7.3
Domi -8.48 ---> Duhaime -7.3

Lorentz -5.11 ---> Lorentz -7.6
Jarnkrok -8.45 ---> ?

Groulx -2.22 ---> ?
Quillan -5.07 ---> ?
Haymes -2.25 ---> ?

Blais -0.85* ---> ?
Tverberg -1.41 ---> ?
Pezzetta -3.06 ---> ?


McCabe +1.44 ---> McCabe +2.2
OEL +1.02 ---> OEL -0.4

Rielly -4.10 ---> Rielly +0.6
Carlo -3.85 ---> Raddysh +9.3

Stecher -5.89 ---> Tanev +2.5
Benoit -14.1 ---> Andrae +6.0

Myers -8.61 ---> ?
Tanev +0.43 ---> ?

Benning -1.27 ---> ?
Villeneuve -1.30 ---> ?
Rifai -1.86 ---> ?
Thrun -2.17 ---> ?
Mermis -2.50 ---> ?


​
So actually the Leafs come off looking even more improved than this article says, as long as the new roster performs around the average of last year's performance and last year's preseason projected performance.


The biggest uprades looking at that would be:

1. Andrae over last year's #6 slot
2. Raddysh over last year's #4 slot
3. Matthews bouncing back to elite again (though not back to super elite)
4. Tanev over last year's #5 slot
5. McKenna over last year's #3W slot
 
They were so fucking bad last year tho with so much low hanging fruit (I.e. additions by subtraction) to easily improve them team. Very pleased that Chayka acted on those so quickly. I think he botched the goaltending and aimed way too low on the forward group, but overall they should be dramatically improved over what was arguably the worst team in the NHL last year by the nerdies.
 
Injuries too. Matthews obviously. Knies was hurt all year. Tanev missed the season. The goalies.

You can sort of add Cowan to this list, since he was kept out of the lineup for a bunch of games.
 
Hey guys, what's good? Trust God, us trading Woll/Hildeby and adding Boborovsky smells like God's cooking up a Cup for us real soon (1-2 years)! See ya'll at the parade(s)!
 
worm said:
A violent sport that teaches hate
Click to expand...


I dunno, God seems to love violence and hate based on the Bible I’ve read. Both being personally violent & hateful, and especially when others are violent and hateful on his behalf!

Plus, doesn’t his kid play goal? I keep seeing mentions about him “saving”, so I just assumed.
 
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