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Yeah I mean he’s a 21 year old who’s been passed over in the draft (twice?) and plays on a powerhouse team. I don’t think it’s anything worth worrying about.

I took that to mean that they feel he’s taken too much of the blame from the fans/media and doesn’t want to deal with that in Toronto anymore.

It blows my mind that these Oilers rosters have made two straight Finals.

Here’s what Mirtle wrote at the time: Jarmo Kekalainen gave a quote at the time: “$3.8 million for a first-round pick? No thank you.” I think the reality is Marleau would only go to one place - San Jose. Any team trading for him would have to buy him out and eat that cap space and the actual...

I did provide a counterpoint. You don’t agree with it and that’s fine. None of us had a crystal ball to know how it would ultimately play out. I’m comfortable in the knowledge they bet on 3 of the most talented players they’ve ever had. I can’t say moving one of them would have lead to better...

If you take the three seasons prior to this last one as an example, when together at 5v5 the Leafs had 61% of the goals with those two on the ice together in over 2000 minutes. To me that is elite, elite production, probably among the tops in the league for comparable minutes. I could buy a...

Do you have any evidence to back up that they looked more dangerous apart than together?

After seeing Edmonton in the final with Jack Campbell, Cody Ceci and Darnell Nurse taking up over $17 million in cap space, I don’t take it seriously that they couldn’t have won with this cap allocation, the players just needed to be stars in the playoffs and they weren’t.

I mean they had 11 different goal scorers in that series. They lost because, among other things, Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and Zach Hyman combined for 2 goals total. Leafs actually outscored Montreal by 4 goals in that series (lol). It’s hard for me to buy that a team lost because of lack...

Having concerns is not the same thing as knowing it can’t or won’t work. Like I’ve previously said, in almost every other teams case, their regular season success is a predictor of some sort of playoff success, whether that is multiple round wins or whether it’s the Cup. Sustained regular season...

To add some more context to this, he also had the lowest offensive zone start % of his career.

Well we’re looking at it with hindsight now as not working, but they put up seasons of 115 and 111 points in that time. I know I fully expected the stars to eventually get them over the hump.

I don’t know, did any other teams sign four highly paid players like the Leafs did between July 1, 2018 and Sept 13, 2019 -aka the last one being signed 6 months before the league shut down due to the pandemic. You could not have it happen any worse for the Leafs. All of these contracts would...

At the time I think it was Mirtle said the Leafs and Rodrigues couldn’t agree on a number so presumably he was looking for more from the Leafs, otherwise they would have had him signed had it been for that amount.

I’d argue they were moreso flat cap casualties, as all or a couple of them would have likely been re-signed had the cap not gone unprecedentedly flat for years on end. The salary cap increased between 2023-24 and 2024-25 by more than it did between the entirety of 2018-19 and 2023-24. No...

Could’ve signed him when the Blackhawks released him. But at that time I think Spezza was the more comparable player for old guy who can still produce.

My job here is done lol It’s honestly amazing how they’ve lost some of these series, it defies logic in some cases. That Montreal one might be the prime example. But it often feels like if there’s luck involved they get the bad luck every time. I honestly don’t know what the answer is and I...

Referring specifically to that Montreal series I don’t think the numbers bear out that they were only taking a lot of perimeter shots. The numbers would show you that they were getting the high danger attempts, they just weren’t going in. I think one of the biggest falsehoods of the previous...

Great, now I’m remembering the OT vs Montreal where they had the first 12 shots or something and then Montreal comes down and scores on a random wrister from distance. Just Leafs things.

I mean I don’t think they’re the only successful team in the league to play a style similar to that, but I think they’ve probably had the least amount of success. But I still think the point stands that it would have been reasonable to expect that a successful regular season team would translate...