Babcock's style is super dated, and was not at all conducive to the style of team Dubas has built, but to his credit the team never embarrassed themselves as badly as they did under Keefe. They still had plenty of embarrassing losses, but not to the level of losing to Columbus or to a Zambezi driver.

I'll go Keefe because it was his first season, but I think the team was strongest in the 2nd year of the Matthews Era.

Pretty good summation.

My personal view - no coach can win with Tavares, Matthews, Marner, Nylander and the percentage of the cap those 4 take up.

People love to make a big deal about that game and it really wasn’t. The entire organization was happy for David. Who stepped in with a lead and helped defend it behind a very determined Carolina team.

Embarrassing was the record Babcock had this team playing at. That was brutal.

I think that's an easy excuse. On paper, The Leafs are good enough to win. When they lose, it's not because those guys are overpaid, it's because they aren't winners.

Aren’t winners yet*

If you honestly think the organization was "happy for him" after that loss, you're nuts. Being happy for the guy who just embarrassed you is a lover's mentality.

Also while it's only one game, it was a significant moment when evaluating the Keefe era so far, and it was representative of the general lack of effort from that team throughout the season and into the playoffs. The playoff loss is a much more significant point, and was easily a worse loss than any of the Babcock series'.

daily reminder that pittsburgh won back to back cups with 41% of the cap spent on kessel, crosby, hornqvist and malkin, and 73% of the cap spent on forwards

"yeah but they surely didn't do that again, they HAD to trade one of the big f-"

the year after they spent 40% of the cap on those same 4 players and 66% of the cap spent on forwards

by contrast the leafs have 40% of the cap on 4 players and 65% of the cap spent on forwards (less than pittsburgh ever did)

so like.... idk, having a core group of stars surrounded by cheap depth, a good goalie and a few key defensemen has worked before. We have these guys for about 4-5 more years under contract - I like our chances tbh

Well yeah, but my point is that "they're overpaid" is a terrible excuse for when they lose. The team is good enough to win even with those big contracts. Whether they win or lose, rests solely on those key players ability or lack thereof to get the job done.

For the most part I agree. Our top 4 players have been great, even any player thrown on to a line with them. As was demonstrated in the play in is that they can’t do it all and other players need to pitch in. It’s not that we can’t afford bottom 6 or that we didn’t have a good bottom 6. But when we needed them to produce they didn’t.

I don’t buy into the “you can’t win with those salaries”either. Dubas has seemingly put together the deepest and best team of his short tenure during a flat cap. The rest is a 50/50 split of luck and determination.

Stay healthy, get some bounces and compete every minute.

Yes they were happy for him. Literally the whole team and management. Parading it as An embarrassment to the leafs is a pretty ****ty thing to do to Ayres as well.

Foster comes in as an emergency and he’s a hero. Ayres deserves a bit of credit for his time in the spotlight. The guy comes from a family of goalies and got his moment but he is still referred to as “the Zamboni driver”.

Sure the loss sucks but it’s not like we were winning that game before Ayers came in. It’s just a loss. I’m sure the entire otlrganization hates losing. But in this loss they were also excited and happy for David.

And boy do you ever need to look back to the Babcock era... losing game 7 to Boston when we were up. That horrid start that we had to the season. That keefe dug us out of. No doubt keefe is better suited for this team.

Neither is the short answer.
The long answer is the game did move past babcock but at least he was hard on them trying to instill some toughness.
Now they are just soft desperately trying to bring in old vets to make them "tougher"

You would think, seeing as you are doing a daily reminder, that you would know the most basic fact that the Leafs' are spending 49.7% of the cap on their 4 forwards, not 40%, but, I guess feel free to keep on lying to people every day if it makes you feel better about how badly the Leafs' have screwed up the cap and their long-term prospects in their rebuild.

If they aren't winners then they are overpaid. I haven't seen a single game where all four of those players played as well as their cap hits.

The thing here is that Babs was a complete ass. If his tactics were a bit less outdated while treating his players (Mitch, namely) in a better way, I believe it would've been a great thing.

The thing that worries me a bit is that GMKD and Keefe seem to want to befriend their guys.

Now, that's not saying that I think Keefe is the wrong person for the job, it's just a weird feeling I have. I mean GMKD literally told Willy that he wouldn't trade him while caving to every AM and MM contractual demand.

I still pick Keefe tho, I think he'll grow as a coach.

On a side note, I really like adding Joe and McLean to the organization, because they're old guys, they have a sh*tload of experience, which could being a new perspective to Keefe and his coaching staff

Correct. It's so frustrating. If they played like their talent tells us they should 9 nights out of 10, they'd be top 3 in the league.

I hope Simmonds and Bogosian can help change the way the team plays.

Honestly all this team needs to be a contender. Just need to give a ****. Matthews was the only one of the four that did it most nights from what I saw.

my mistake, must have been confusing that number with $40M.

my point still stands, the team is deep. 49.7% of the cap on those two top 10 centres (one being top 5) and two of some of the league's most talent wingers (easily both in the top 20). And they are all still quite young. And if we're comparing apples to apples, I'm taking Marner and Nylander over Kessel and Hornqvist as two of my players included in that "core 4" comparison.

28 year old Crosby > 22 year old Matthews
29 year old Malkin >> 29 year old Tavares
28 year old Kessel << 23 year old Nylander Nylander
28 year old Hornqvist <<<<< 22 year old Marner

They have a lot more of the cap allocated to defenceman than pittsburgh did as well, with stalwart guys like Muzzin and Rielly and a great top pair guy in brodie.

Value propositions like Vesey (15-20 goals for 900K), Kerfoot at 3.5, Thornton and Spezza for league min, Simmonds for 1.5 are what's necessary with that cap allocation, and guys going forward like Joey Andersen, prospects like Robertson and Sandin on ELCs - that's all that's necessary to keep the team competitive

Paying those players big money just meant they can't overpay their depth, something they've done admirably so far, given they don't have a single bad contract on the team

That's such an arbitrary statement.

If you watched the games you would know Tavares literally was the best player on the ice every single night. He is arguably the hardest working player on the team. And to show for it, he's got 73 goals (10th league wide) and 148 points (22nd league wide) to show for it. He's even better at 5v5 (4th in goals and 15th in points).

Matthews is easily a top 3 goalscorer in the league, he's competing with wingers essentially for the top spot, while also being a solid 2way centre. Second only to Ovi in goals scored since joining the league.

Marner is a point producing machine, easily the MVP most nights if it's not Johnny T, 17th in points since 16-17 (5th in primary assists). 11th over the last two years in points and 2nd in primary assists (not to mention a clutch defensive player and shot blocker)

Willy after his contract debacle was 16th in goals scored this year, 43rd in points (29th at 5v5). After the coaching change he was 14th in goals scored, 36th in points. He was tearing it up for $7M on pace for 41 goals

But please, go on about how they're overpaid and they "don't perform". Marner has 21 points in 25 playoff games, matthews has 19 points (12 goals!!) in 25 playoff games, Tavares has 30 points in 36 playoff games, and Nylander has 15 points in 25 playoff games.

Our stars are our star players, they play well, they're paid for it and we lose in spite of them. The leafs had the 6th worst goal differential in 2016-17, 2017-18, 5th worst in 18-19, and 11th worst in 19-20 (with 8 extra teams in the playoffs). We got better in 19-20, but couldn't get a single goal from any of our bottom 6 players save for a few.

We had one dimentional depth and it's been addressed, but the problem has never been the uber talented top end talent we've had at the top of the lineup, the fact that people think it is is amusing to me

You should try watching hockey sometime...

I’m going to disagree with this one. Tavares had a great season last year as did marner. However I don’t think he was the best player on most nights this past season, that would be Matthews. He put up goals and points but I don’t think he drove that line, I think nylander did. Marner also took some games off this year and could’ve been committed IMO. They put up the points and marner is a two way player but they did not bring it every night.

IMO 3-4 players brought it every night. Matthews, Hyman, Reilly and Muzzin.

Yawn, if the big four have been playing up to their contracts and despite that the team remains a bubble team that has never managed to win a playoff series, with the big-4 managing 3 points at 5v5 in the return to play series then this team is far, far worse shape than even I could imagine.

Agreed. I am glad at least some fans care enough about the actual performance of the team that they will not continually defend complete mediocrity from 40M a year worth of cap space.

3 of the big 4 have been fantastic in the playoffs most seasons, 2 of which have nearly been point per game for their careers

if you watched the games, again, you'd know that Toronto radically outshot and outplayed Columbus for effectively the entire series, but they shot a record low 2% shooting percentage and lost their best dman. The problem has never been the big 4, it's been the defence or the lack of depth scoring (in 17-18 it was the atrocious goaltending with Freddy getting a .896SV%

The big 4 have regularly been the best 4 players on the team year in and year out - in the playoffs every line matters, the leafs got a collective 1 goal and 5 assists from their bottom 6 players. Goat, Spezza, Mikheyev, Engvall, Johnsson, Clifford ZERO points. Kerfoot and Kappy nabbed a couple of assists (primary and secondary) on Robertson's ONE GOAL, and one of the other goals in game 3. There was one SHIFT in the entire 5 game series where we registered some production out of the bottom 6. The rest of the series the only points/goals were coming from the big 4 and hyman

The problem was with the depth, Matthews/Tavares/Willy/Marner had no problem dominating Colombus, and their possession stats and points show it - but everybody else was absolute garbage. You can't say the reason we lost was because Matthews didn't score MORE goals than he already did. Like is Tavares supposed to get 5 goals a game now? Your third line has to register a point at some part of the series, you know? Kappy, Kerfoot, Gauthier, Engvall, Clifford , Robertson and Mikheyev take up 11% of the cap and had 2 shifts in the same game where they even made a dent.

top 20 in scoring year in and year out and being the only guys to register meaningful point totals in the playoffs is mediocrity now?

the team has been mediocre, it's not those guys lmao

Being (barely) top-20 when you are paid like top-5 is mediocrity.