Correct me if I’m wrong but I think the issue with this team is that they keep turning over the puck and give up odd man rushes which 1, the opposition usually scores on or 2, causes them to lose organization in the defensive zone leading to a goal.

I know it’s easy to blame the players who make the errors cuz they display the inability to react quickly and a lack of puck control, but at the same time these types of mistakes have been happening for years and several players have committed them. I wonder if it’s got anything to do with the coaching instructions, like all of these odd man rushes are a result of trying to make a high risk transition or pass when there’s no space available, or when the player lacks the ability to carry it out of pressure.

I wanna ask if this is happening cuz the set up that the coach deploys for his players to pass/carry the puck is ineffective, or maybe he is expecting players who are not suited to play a high possession game to execute those high risk progressions when they’re more suited to play a simpler style by just getting it deep and creating a cycle with their forecheck. Like honestly, players like Engvall, Muzzin, Holl, Kerfoot and Mikheyev should not be trying to create seam openings, it would be way more efficient for them to make the simple play. I wonder if there’s a lack of balance in terms of high risk puck possession and safe puck management?

Thoughts on my take?

IMO...no.

Leafs have a mangement (GM) problem. Too many overpriced contracts, leaves the Leafs struggling to find quality players for their bottom enders. And years of trading away draft picks, doesn't allow the Leafs to have enough NHLer cost efficient ELCs.

It’s a bit of both, IMO. Obviously hindsight is 20/20 but a part of me wonders if TOR rushed into win-now mode too quickly, like after the 2019-20 season it was clear that their D core needed a full revamp outside Rielly. I wonder if they were too aggressive to give 31 year old Muzzin a big deal when they could’ve looked for younger less proven players and developed them to suit the system so that when Sandin, Dermott, Liljegren were ready everyone would be heading into their primes. Kinda like how COL did with the Toews trade, like maybe we could’ve traded for guys like Mike Reilly/ Jonas Siegenthaler/Kylington/Kulak. Like we can’t just expect to acquire other team’s proven players, you look PIT, COL, TB, all of them have players whom the coaching staff developed whether it’s homegrown or acquired as a low-risk project. I wonder if that’s something that TOR lacks, if that makes sense?

Its 2 things.

The first is that this leafs team sometimes dont take bad teams seriously enough - and since every team brings their best against toronto (center of the universe and all that), we get left open for some weird ****ty losses that really shouldnt happen.

The second is a tactical thing, the way our team plays is sometimes vulnerable to Carlyle puck - a staple of bad teams. Its because we dont defend the rush very well and youll notice over the past few years most back breakers come off the rush

Palhal your boomer is showing again.
The leafs contracts are all undervalue. Yes all of them

At the time of signing....they were big overpay. Matthews on a five year deal, the second highest paid player in the league at the time. That was poor. Marner signed for 11m, and the summer he and Carolina's Aho were up for contracts. Aho and Marner had identical stats for two years previously. Aho signs for 8.5m, Marner 11m.
Trading for 4.7m Murray
Jarnkrok....why was he even needed especially at 2.1m

How can you rationally say. "The leafs contracts are all undervalue. Yes all of them".

I'll comment on Muzzin. Yeah the contract looks bad. But at the time of signing...believe it was mid February 2020, the NHL had announced that they expected the cap to be 84 to 88 million in 20/21.
Shortly afterwards the Covid lockdowns, and the cap stayed flat.
I've been one to say that the Leafs should have traded Nylander last summer, and his good value contract, and with the cap and get a better balanced lineup.
I even suggested....that maybe Marner should be left exposed in the Seattle expansion draft. Then the Leaf should have 11m to spend better than Marner. But of course you need a good GM and management team, to spend that new found cap wisely, which Dubas, Shanahan and friends probably couldn't do.

Because they are.
Every one of them is/has been outperforming their deal. And ahos stats were not the same as mitches lmao.
Moreover, the cap (non) situation does not explain the loss.
Your ideas if implemented would send us back to the worst of the last 50 years. Dont you think that maybe its time to stop advocating for a managemnt system that has led to no one under the age of 60 remembering a Leafs cup win?

Sorry bud, you talking like a irrational "FANatic". Contract should be based on comparables, not what the player (or management) wants. Please take five minutes and look at th comparable between Marner and Aho in the previous two season before they signed their RFA extensions. Identical. You seem to base contract values on your favourite players or teams . I've moved in the "cap reality: despite my age. Seems like you haven't.

It's one game and trying to parse anything from that is simply an excuse to get mad at whatever scapegoat you want

No

Team just didnt play out of the gate well but as we see out of some competitors this isnt anything new

Some teams start slow then find their rhythm and do dmg

By game 5 we should see much better performance for the remainder of the season

Lmao.
I think you've moved onto something in your age but reality has little to do with it

Revisit this question in a few months and I may have an idea. Right now, I’d like to see how this season goes.

The fact that you wanted Marner to be exposed in the expansion draft so they could spend that money on depth pieces just shows how bad your takes are.

Credibility out the window.

Yeah I get that, but I also wonder if the problem with giving up odd man rushes is due to the fact that we want our bottom 6 players like Engvall, Kerfoot and shutdown caliber D like Muzzin-Holl to play this type of high possession game in which they hold onto the puck and look for seams by resisting the forecheck. Like it feels like a lot of the unsuccessful o-zone sequences that lead to turnovers comes from unsuccessful pinches by these D, or by failed carries from the F. Maybe they should emphasize more of a forecheck based cycle with these guys?

Yeah it was rich to give Marner, Matthews and Nylander those deals for only half the term, but those guys fit in TOR's outlook of having a prolonged window and you can't ignore elite talent. I felt it was the recruiting of depth pieces that was rushed, like giving multi-year deals to Mango, Kappy and Kerf and signing the players whose primes were ending like Muzzin and Brodie. Keefe and Dubas didn't really plan what philosophy or identity they wanted the team to have, and I don't think Keefe is very good at developing players tbh. PIT was also paying around 55% of the cap on Crosby, Malkin, Kessel, Hornqvist and Letang in 2015-16, most of their depth F were rookies and the D was full of reclamation projects developed within the year. When you combine the fact that the GM + coach have a good vision of exactly how they want the team to play, and the coach is very good at teaching those players how to execute that system, you get a very successful team. With TOR, IDK what the idea of signing guys like Ritchie, Vesey, Simmonds and Clifford was when they 1, didn't have the foundation to be successful in a high possession system, and 2, when Keefe was terrible at developing them.

Tbf, if you trade Nylander and Marner, you could probably get some ELC players who suit the tiki-taka philosophy Keefe wants to deploy. And you'd probably still have enough cap space to sign Rodrigues, Compher, Frederick Gaudreau, Zucker, Tatar and Donskoi, all who have more puck carrying ability than Engvall + Kerfoot. As well as Sanheim to replace Muzzin and Jensen to replace Holl.

No sense in trying to convince me that trading two of your best players to waste money on inferior players is a good idea. Save your breath.

other than tavares for the core 5 yes.

Leafs are good forecheckers, but the reason that the long possesion and turnover seems so big to you is because of how often we try that play. A small amount of a large pie is still a large amount.
Besides the benefits outweigh the costs from what your scenerio says - it does help us score more than it gives up - but a thing we can work on is neutral zone D to shut down a rush chance. Funny enough i think the answer is MORE aggressive d, not less. Gotta head them off early and force bad plays

Nope. JTs contract is fine. Ignore media narratives he shot way below expected last year. Worst on the team contract wise might be muzzin and even then im not entirely ready to say he hasnt played to value over the course of his entire deal

It hasn’t really outweighed the cost in the playoffs, I wonder if some guys like Kerfoot, Engvall and most definitely the fourth line should be looking at establishing a cycle off a dump n chase, leave this puck management to the elite guys. That’s what they did today when Holl-Muzzin were out there and it was definitely an improvement.

But that wasn't the comment from Random.....he said all Leafs were undervalued.

I mean it has though. Youre attributing the losses to the wrong thing. Ive already said most back breakers come from bad goals (Goalies should have had A LOT of them) off the rush.

Its Goalies, and rush defence. The latter of which we can work on