Leafs @ Bruins - Apr. 25th, 7:30pm - CBC, TSN 1050

[Palmateer29]

Jake picked a shitty time have the worst game of his career.

Lots of people jumping on him, he had a terrible game, so did Freddy for the most part, Nylander was terrible (the game tying goal is as much on him as it is on Jake), I almost forgot Bozak and JVR played for the Leafs last night they were completely invisible, Plekanec only had one job with his line and that failed as well. Tons of blame to go around but good on Jake for stepping up and saying it was his fault.

[sickbeast]

The media is saying that Gardiner may have played his last game as a leaf.

[Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate]

Perspective is hard this soon after, but despite their young age, there are some issues here.

I think there are some concerns about Matthews.  He was largely ineffective and for a player of his talent and size it is of concern.

There have to be questions about Andersen.  While some games he was great, in three of the games he was not.  Is he consistent enough to be the guy?  That isn�t clear to me.

The defence is bad.  Really bad and if it isn�t fixed there won�t be much chance of being a Cup competitor at all.  Not sure what they do about that.  No more high picks to find a stud D-man.

There were of course some positives, but difficult to see those in the context of a Game 7 loss.  It is so disappointing because the Bruins were there to be taken tonight.

I'm not concerned about Matthews at all.

Unless it's revealed that he's been playing hurt I agree with BBF on Matthews.  My concerns are that we might be overrating him just a tad.  He got neutralized and the very best of the best find ways not to be.

Over the last two seasons: 5th most total goals  despite playing 10-20 fewer (<----see that herman) games than most of the guys ahead of him, most even strength goals (tied with McDavid, but 20 fewer games), 3rd highest goals per game.

He's not overrated, he's flat out amazing and is only 20 years old.

He was flat out less than amazing this series.  And he's not beyond criticism.

Let me be clear: I said he might be a tad overrated.  By that, I mean he might end up being a notch or two below, say, Crosby.  He hasn't yet shown he can dominate a playoff game, let alone a series.  That's what I hope to see from him.  But it's an open question.

If he'd turned in a Marner-level performance this series, I wouldn't have any doubts anymore.  Until he does, I will: meaning, I wonder whether he'll not quite make the level of the best of the best.

[herman]

So obviously I am disappointed in the result, but I'm not surprised.

My perspective:
The Leafs never really got firing on all cylinders, key depth vets were largely non-factors against lesser competition (Bozak-JvR), and our top offensive contributors were stymied by world class Olympic-medalling veterans. Oh yeah, our top matchup centre stupidly removed himself from the series for 3 games.

AND we still took the second best team in the East (and possibly the whole league in the second half of the season) that was really clicking to the brink and it took one period of brain farting and youthful despair to down us.

So yes, we lost, deservedly so, but we played like ass and still almost eliminated one of the best.

[TML fan]

How much of it was the Leafs playing badly and how much of it was Boston making them look really bad?

The thing that stuck out for me the most over the course of the series was how lazy the Leafs are as a group without the puck. Boston literally never stopped skating for the entire series. I made mention of it in game 1 that I wasn't sure Boston could keep that up over the entire series. Turns out they could.

I'm only surprised by the result in that I'm shocked it went 7 games.

[WhatIfGodWasALeaf]

Gus Katsaros has an excellent breakdown of the systems issues the Leafs faced against the Bruins, check out his twitter timeline.

[Frank E]

I wonder if any of the reporters give Babcock a grilling on his ice time distribution. It was evident pretty early on that Gardiner was struggling and Dermott was playing well yet Gardner ends up playing 24 minutes to 11 for Dermott.

Kapanen scored an amazing shorty and be played under 9 minutes??? Like c'mon some of this is on the coach for not managing his team in game

The kids from the Marlies were nice-to-haves; I agree they're generally the better option, but the coach has gone through the entire season leaning on his prime players to pretty good effect and you sort of have to bank on that. I'd like Babcock to be faster on the uptake, but that's just how I see it.

I thought Kapanen and Johnsson should've been up with the Leafs last year instead of Matt Martin and whoever so that they'd be ready to be relied upon this year, but there's also their confidence and developmental readiness to account for. Johnsson said he appreciated the extra time they afforded him with the Marlies, rather than calling him up to be the franchise saviour and yo-yoing him when he inevitably faltered a bit.

Let's note, at this point, that the real back-breaker in that series -- and in game 7 particularly -- was one Jake DeBrusk. A 21 year old rookie who average 15 min/game during the series.

I know you've all been waiting for my opinion, so wait no more:

1.  You play your best players when the game is on the line.  They're the ones that have earned it all year, and you count on them to get up.  DeBrusk is one of Boston's best forwards, he's a second line player that plays those minutes.  The Leafs also have players his age, and younger, that played a lot more the DeBrusk did/does.

2.  I think the Kadri suspension is where this series got decided.  That suspension really hurt the lineup.

3.  The Leafs counted on Andersen far too many times this year, and their luck ran out there.

4.  Gardiner had a bad game, oh well.  He's a 50 point defenseman this year, and one of the key guys that got this team into the playoffs.  If the Leafs could replay that period, I'm pretty sure they'd play Gardiner again in those minutes.

5.  I don't consider last night's game to be indicative of anything in particular, I'm more trying to look at the series overall.  The 7 game series did show me that Matthews and Nylander have a fair bit of work to do to earn $10-$11 mil and $6-$7 mil on my Leafs team.  Marner and Marleau played well. The newer kids played pretty darn well, all things considered.

6.  Young team, didn't get it done, not really surprised.  I'm looking forward to an interesting off-season.

[Bender]

I don't even know why anyone would waste their breath discussing our forwards. The forwards clearly are not our problem. Defense, defense, defense, DEFENSE. How do we get better? Who do we sign/trade for?

The forwards, in some cases, could've played much better team defense. But I think that's addition by subtraction of Bozak, JVR & Komarov.

[CarltonTheBear]

I know you've all been waiting for my opinion, so wait no more:

1.  You play your best players when the game is on the line.  They're the ones that have earned it all year, and you count on them to get up.  DeBrusk is one of Boston's best forwards, he's a second line player that plays those minutes.  The Leafs also have players his age, and younger, that played a lot more the DeBrusk did/does.

2.  I think the Kadri suspension is where this series got decided.  That suspension really hurt the lineup.

3.  The Leafs counted on Andersen far too many times this year, and their luck ran out there.

4.  Gardiner had a bad game, oh well.  He's a 50 point defenseman this year, and one of the key guys that got this team into the playoffs.  If the Leafs could replay that period, I'm pretty sure they'd play Gardiner again in those minutes.

5.  I don't consider last night's game to be indicative of anything in particular, I'm more trying to look at the series overall.  The 7 game series did show me that Matthews and Nylander have a fair bit of work to do to earn $10-$11 mil and $6-$7 mil on my Leafs team.  Marner and Marleau played well. The newer kids played pretty darn well, all things considered.

6.  Young team, didn't get it done, not really surprised.  I'm looking forward to an interesting off-season.

It pains me to say it but I agree with everything that Frank wrote.

[Hobbes]

I know you've all been waiting for my opinion, so wait no more:

1.  You play your best players when the game is on the line.  They're the ones that have earned it all year, and you count on them to get up.  DeBrusk is one of Boston's best forwards, he's a second line player that plays those minutes.  The Leafs also have players his age, and younger, that played a lot more the DeBrusk did/does.

2.  I think the Kadri suspension is where this series got decided.  That suspension really hurt the lineup.

3.  The Leafs counted on Andersen far too many times this year, and their luck ran out there.

4.  Gardiner had a bad game, oh well.  He's a 50 point defenseman this year, and one of the key guys that got this team into the playoffs.  If the Leafs could replay that period, I'm pretty sure they'd play Gardiner again in those minutes.

5.  I don't consider last night's game to be indicative of anything in particular, I'm more trying to look at the series overall.  The 7 game series did show me that Matthews and Nylander have a fair bit of work to do to earn $10-$11 mil and $6-$7 mil on my Leafs team.  Marner and Marleau played well. The newer kids played pretty darn well, all things considered.

6.  Young team, didn't get it done, not really surprised.  I'm looking forward to an interesting off-season.

It pains me to say it but I agree with everything that Frank wrote.

To me the series also reinforced the importance of winning draws, or at very least prevent clean opposition wins. Maybe the advanced stats say it doesn't matter, but to these eyes it sure seemed like we spent a lot of extra time in our zone and a lot less in theirs purely by our inability to start with control of the puck. I can think of 3 or 4 Boston goals that came immediately off a won draw, and far too many occasions where we had to withstand sustained pressure in our own zone after a faceoff. We paid after a number of our icings...the Bruins, rarely.

[Bender]

So obviously I am disappointed in the result, but I'm not surprised.

My perspective:
The Leafs never really got firing on all cylinders, key depth vets were largely non-factors against lesser competition (Bozak-JvR), and our top offensive contributors were stymied by world class Olympic-medalling veterans. Oh yeah, our top matchup centre stupidly removed himself from the series for 3 games.

AND we still took the second best team in the East (and possibly the whole league in the second half of the season) that was really clicking to the brink and it took one period of brain farting and youthful despair to down us.

So yes, we lost, deservedly so, but we played like ass and still almost eliminated one of the best.

Yeah but do we really have to play like ass? I mean, throughout the season people were saying the Leafs were outscoring their problems, and once scoring dried up Freddy got going. We relied a lot on things that don't seem replicable to me. The team doesn't play a tight team game and got outshot and outchanced all season long and it was exposed in this series.

I get that we didn't have Kadri, and maybe to some degree that sealed it, but man... there's quite a bit of work to be done to go from where we are to the kind of team we want to be.

[WhatIfGodWasALeaf]

Going to hear a lot of chatter over Gardiner and Andersen today. They were both terrible last night, but the only reason the Leafs were even involved in Game 7 was because Tuukka Rask was terrible. Leafs scored on very little shots & didn't really put up much if a counter.

— Gus Katsaros🏒 (@KatsHockey) April 26, 2018

[azzurri63]

The media is saying that Gardiner may have played his last game as a leaf.

Good. Like the kid has some good qualities but making the same mistakes as he did 5 years ago. He hasn't learned s**t. We didn't deserve to win but he made some senseless plays just giving the puck away when he had ample time to make a smart decision. The debrusk goal another blunder. The whole game looked like he was lost with and without the puck. He is also up for a new contract and honestly I wouldn't pay him anymore than what he's getting now and that would be too much for a guy I would play 10-15 minutes max. Let him go.

[Bender]

I know you've all been waiting for my opinion, so wait no more:

1.  You play your best players when the game is on the line.  They're the ones that have earned it all year, and you count on them to get up.  DeBrusk is one of Boston's best forwards, he's a second line player that plays those minutes.  The Leafs also have players his age, and younger, that played a lot more the DeBrusk did/does.

2.  I think the Kadri suspension is where this series got decided.  That suspension really hurt the lineup.

3.  The Leafs counted on Andersen far too many times this year, and their luck ran out there.

4.  Gardiner had a bad game, oh well.  He's a 50 point defenseman this year, and one of the key guys that got this team into the playoffs.  If the Leafs could replay that period, I'm pretty sure they'd play Gardiner again in those minutes.

5.  I don't consider last night's game to be indicative of anything in particular, I'm more trying to look at the series overall.  The 7 game series did show me that Matthews and Nylander have a fair bit of work to do to earn $10-$11 mil and $6-$7 mil on my Leafs team.  Marner and Marleau played well. The newer kids played pretty darn well, all things considered.

6.  Young team, didn't get it done, not really surprised.  I'm looking forward to an interesting off-season.

It pains me to say it but I agree with everything that Frank wrote.

To me the series also reinforced the importance of winning draws, or at very least prevent clean opposition wins. Maybe the advanced stats say it doesn't matter, but to these eyes it sure seemed like we spent a lot of extra time in our zone and a lot less in theirs purely by our inability to start with control of the puck. I can think of 3 or 4 Boston goals that came immediately off a won draw, and far too many occasions where we had to withstand sustained pressure in our own zone after a faceoff. We paid after a number of our icings...the Bruins, rarely.

I think the advanced stats say it doesn't matter at centre ice. But it definitely matters in the defensive zone. And I also wonder if their assumption is a 45%-55% range for each team. It felt like we were getting schooled all night long in faceoffs.

[CarltonTheBear]

He is also up for a new contract and honestly I wouldn't pay him anymore than what he's getting now and that would be too much for a guy I would play 10-15 minutes max. Let him go.

6 defencemen in the entire league with 60+ GP averaged less than 15 minutes a game this season. 6. Only 1 averaged less than 14 minutes.