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2025 Offseason Thread: Spring Cleaning

herman said:
cabber24 has the long and short of it.

Nylander's defense grades out as average-ish. It just looks really bad because he isn't skating uselessly after plays no one really has a chance on turning into a battle. Nylander actually does go to the net and takes plenty of punishment in doing so. He just doesn't go there too early to stand around getting whacked before the puck is there, which is the traditional method. He is also one of 3 shooters on the team (one of 2, this past season) that is an actual scoring threat at distance, so I don't know why anyone would use a knife to do a prybar's job.

He disappeared after round 2 game 2 (after hard-carrying the offense for Round 1) because his line had to eat the Barkov/Forsling matchup after he shredded the Panthers for Games 1 and 2. His linemates were a slowing John Tavares and Pontus Holmberg (no hands) or Max Pacioretty (no back/knees). Didn't see any other line taking similar advantage of their matchups after that change. The only game 7 goal we scored was because Nylander was moved to Domi's wing for a shift and threw a pick on the defender to give Domi a shooting lane on a rush chance.

The mandate from the coach and GM are to win the slot (in DZ and OZ) with direct hockey, and staying calm in the critical moments. I think people are free to interpret what that means in terms of predicting personnel changes.
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Well, average is being generous. Sometimes he backchecks, sometimes he doesn't. He definitely bails on taking a hit if need be. And I just disagree with your contention that he goes to the net. He rarely does.

What you say are good reasons for disappearing. But he did, in fact, disappear. Like Marner & Matthews (except in G6) he disappeared, He didn't, or couldn't, elevate his game.

I remember him getting tons of flak for not signing right away back then, not for his playoff failures. My point is, he doesn't deserve to get out this post-mortem as if he's the only one who isn't a corpse.
 
ZBBM said:
Well, average is being generous. Sometimes he backchecks, sometimes he doesn't. He definitely bails on taking a hit if need be. And I just disagree with your contention that he goes to the net. He rarely does.
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Rewatch the whole season and you'll find examples of pretty much every player on every team sometimes backchecking and sometimes not, and bailing out on hits. Except for Chris Tanev.

And you can disagree with my contention that he goes to the net as much as you'd like.
This is Willy.
nylanwi96


This is the whole team:
TOR


You can find the individual spray charts here, in their season links

TOR 24-25

Visualizations and predictions for understanding hockey.
hockeyviz.com hockeyviz.com

Those junk shots from the left corner are a combination of Bobby McMann, Nick Robertson, Steven Lorentz, and Max Domi lol
 
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I don't know how hard the Leafs tried to bring Klingberg back...or if they did at all, but honestly that kind of pissed me off if they didn't get the first shake at the can. We paid 4.1M for him to not play for the team last year. We funded his rehab.

In comparison Connor Brown gets a 1M deal last year with significant performance bonuses that he hits easily (10GP) but has a pretty miserable year while coming back from major injury. He rewards the Oilers by signing a 1 year deal for 1M.

Hakanpaa got paid to get free rehab with the Leafs rehab team. If he comes back on anything beyond league minimum...no thank you...and to be honest I think I'd rather have Myers or Rifai as the 7th/8th defensemen and not worry about their knees exploding.

Sam Bennett is going to be David Clarkson all over again. I think Bennett is still a better player than Clarkson but I guarantee Mr. Elbows all the goalies is getting suspended in Toronto. Unless we are signing Gregory to be our new Team President.
 
L K said:
I don't know how hard the Leafs tried to bring Klingberg back...or if they did at all, but honestly that kind of pissed me off if they didn't get the first shake at the can. We paid 4.1M for him to not play for the team last year. We funded his rehab.

In comparison Connor Brown gets a 1M deal last year with significant performance bonuses that he hits easily (10GP) but has a pretty miserable year while coming back from major injury. He rewards the Oilers by signing a 1 year deal for 1M.

Hakanpaa got paid to get free rehab with the Leafs rehab team. If he comes back on anything beyond league minimum...no thank you...and to be honest I think I'd rather have Myers or Rifai as the 7th/8th defensemen and not worry about their knees exploding.

Sam Bennett is going to be David Clarkson all over again. I think Bennett is still a better player than Clarkson but I guarantee Mr. Elbows all the goalies is getting suspended in Toronto. Unless we are signing Gregory to be our new Team President.
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But the goalies water bottles will be safe again then
 
5v5 ixGF (individual expected goals for) from hockeyviz

5v5GFGF/60ixGFixGF/60Delta xGF
Nylander241.1717.60.866.4
Knies221.2215.40.856.6
Tavares201.1314.10.795.9
McMann16111.40.714.6
Matthews150.9417.91.13-2.9
Marner150.7611.30.573.7
Robertson131.0580.655
Domi80.536.40.421.6
Pacioretty50.676.30.84-1.3
Holmberg20.157.90.61-5.9


2023-24 for reference for the players that matter:
5v5GFGF/60ixGFixGF/60Delta xGF
Matthews381.8426.41.2811.6
Nylander221.1316.30.845.7
Marner160.9511.70.74.3
Tavares150.8119.51.06-4.5
Knies150.911.90.713.1

Holy shirtballs, Matthews going from shooting 11.6 goals above expected going down to 3 goals below expected (-14.5 goal swing) while his expected goals also took a decent dive (-32%). So not super fair to compare an injury-riddled near-career low to a career season, but that's a huge chunk off the team goal counts. Some rebound back to normal would be very welcome.
 
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ZBBM said:
herman — and I'm not trying to be an a-hole to you on this — you are eager to get rid of Marner. I don't agree, but whatever. Treliving talked about changing the DNA. My question to you is: Is part of that getting William Nylander to actually (1) play defense and (2) go to the net and take some punishment to score goals in the playoffs?

It pisses me off that he's getting no flak whatsoever. He disappeared when it counted most just like the rest of them. If he's not willing to change HIS DNA, HIS game, to succeed in the playoffs, he can follow Marner out the damn door.
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Well stated. And thinking out loud, the DNA can also be changed by trading guys that are signed. I also think it's a huge mistake letting 16 walk unless of course they have no choice. I've said it before and funny thing Darren Pang agreed a few days back on Overdrive when he said trade 88.
 
The PK was up and down on the season but I liked Lambert. Between losing Marner and Lambert that's a pretty massive downgrade
 
L K said:
The PK was up and down on the season but I liked Lambert. Between losing Marner and Lambert that's a pretty massive downgrade
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I dunno about that. I think for a team that had pretty great goaltending (2nd in the league in 5-on-5 save percentage), over $24mil on your usual top 2 PK forwards, and a pretty solid top D pair in McCabe-Tanev being 17th in the league in PK percentage and 22nd in xGA/60 on the PK is actually pretty underwhelming.
 
The fact is Marner isn't coming back and rehashing that ad nauseum is pointless. All trades are on the table but this team didn't get it done and Marner is the first shoe to drop. And personally, I wouldn't want to pay him $14M to stay anyway.
 
bustaheims said:
We need at least one more guy on the backend with Rielly's puck moving abilities. The lack of mobility and puck moving skills makes the Leafs very susceptible to a heavy forecheck, with Florida really took advantage of (Ottawa tried to as well, they're just not good enough to turn it into an advantage for them).

Haakanpaa is not the guy for that, at all. There are enough guys on the roster who bring the type of game he does. Carlo essentially made him irrelevant to the Leafs.
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I agree we need at least one more puck mover back there but I wouldnt even consider Rielly a strong puck mover at this point in career as he looked to be one of the worst for handling heavy forecheck and making sound decisions under pressure. He is still a strong skater but is not an overly mobile and elusive skater.
I feel quite strongly that they need to find a trade for him. At some point when you can never seem to find the ideal D partner match you have to realize that the problem isnt the partner.
 
We don't know who's going, but the vibe from from pressers is some will be, who? we will see, I never post or really follow the team after the playoffs but this year is different, I'm a bit nervous and can't wait to see what they do...lol
 
CarltonTheBear said:
I dunno about that. I think for a team that had pretty great goaltending (2nd in the league in 5-on-5 save percentage), over $24mil on your usual top 2 PK forwards, and a pretty solid top D pair in McCabe-Tanev being 17th in the league in PK percentage and 22nd in xGA/60 on the PK is actually pretty underwhelming.
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I felt like I was taking crazy pills at points this season with the talk of how great their defensive play was.

The Leafs in 2021-22 had the 8th best PK and the next season the 12th best. But based on this season you’d think their PK had been terrible for years and years. Keefe never got 1/10 the defensive credit that Berube got this season despite doing it with - a worse D core and worse goaltending.
 
Bullfrog said:
It's not pointless and it's literally not a fact.
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Semantics: The most useful of arguments.

All the reporting is that he's not coming back. He spoke about the team in past tense. The only thing left is for him to say "I'm not coming back." At this point it is highly improbable, and so I think the point of debating whether we keep him or not etc. is relatively moot if we're talking about probabilities.

So let me rephrase. It feels pointless to me to argue about Marner and discuss if he should be the one leaving when all the information we have points to Marner very, very likely leaving.
 
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