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I think, if we took a random sampling of your last 50 posts, nearly 2/3rds of them would modify the Leafs with 'a 28th place team.' I don't agree that that's what they are, and I don't think many observers would. Since that middling roster finished 28th, the Leafs dumped the coach, lucked into a...

I hope, if Knies is being traded, it's as part of something that brings back a right-handed center on a top-6 trajectory, if he's not already there. Names that popped out when filtering Puckpedia: WGP's Vilardi, OTT's Cozens, SJ's Smith, STL's Thomas or Kyrou, DAL's Borque. I would love for the...

That’s what boggles my mind. Matthews is one of the best players the franchise has ever had. Until two years ago, he was a top 5 player in the world. You can bottom out and be in the draft lottery for a couple decades and not get a player as good. Not even investigating whether a big part of the...

Yeah, Sens have a spare top 6 C or something that projects to be that in the next year or so? I think that’s the price for a Knies deal

I would’ve wanted something more definite than picks, but I wouldn’t write the other ones off as late first rounders quite yet. They did just finish in a spot to draft 9th OA.

That was sort of Treliving’s selling point, wasn’t it? Good soldier for whoever signed his checks. Where Dubas wanted, contra Shanahan, to blow up the Core 4 before all the NMCs kicked in, Treliving was happy to sit pat and go shopping for deadline rentals yet again (the Shanaplan!). When his...

Dunno Raddysh but… Big TO homecoming after a breakout season later into the prime sort of gives David Clarkson, no?

I certainly agree that the war was 'ridiculous' (stupid, illegal, evil too). Given that that's the starting point here, I think the terms of the settlement make a lot of sense.

But that's what happens when you lose a war. It's not 'ridiculous.'

What’s so ridiculous?

Really? It's the apparent 'why' of the moves that I find most elusive.

Could be clever comms strategy and op sec, could be they keep going off the board because the jobs they’re offering aren’t appealing to candidates who are on everyone’s radar.

Feels budget conscious. Like the GM hire…

I will be impressed if it gradually becomes clear that Chayka was hired to put a corporate speak smokescreen up while Sundin shadow-GMs us to a team of obscure Swedes. Happy to see Benoit moved for someone who can move a puck. Woulda hoped for a bit more for Woll, but I think I tend to remember...

What stands out, from where I stand as a Leafs fan, is how steadily they worked away at it, over an ownership change, couple-to-few GMs, and several disappointments. And yet that doesn’t come at the expense of managerial agility, as evidenced by how quickly they pivoted from Rantanen to...

He had the pressure of putting the team on his back because the team wasn't as deep. He, like the rest of the team, ran into the fact that he's not one of 2-3 players in the world who can do that. If there had been any deals among the core 4 contracts during the COVID plateau and/or if the...

Well, except when you think (mis)quoting Marner mumbling through a locker clean-out press scrum can overturn the evidence of our lying eyes -- then words are very meaningful indeed.

“because Marner is always liked by his teammates, he didn’t want to go somewhere else to win” is the least plausible one you’ve come up with yet. We’ve gone from “don’t believe your lying eyes” to “here, let’s imagine Marner and his buds hanging out.” Here, we agree. If he’d done this (ie led...

Yes, there’s even more reason for Mathews to be down on the team than Marner had. Marner’s either smarter, holds teams to a higher standard, or had a different contract expiration. Whichever it was, he realized it wasn’t happening in Toronto and decided to move on rather than re-sign.

It isn’t literally the same decision, but it is fundamentally the same one: an elite player looks around at his team—supporting cast, young players coming, how management improves things—and decides that his best chance to contribute to a winning program is elsewhere.