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2025 Offseason Thread: Spring Cleaning

KW Sluggo said:
I'm sick of it too.

I am also sick of Marner being the only one blamed for the Leafs' failure(s). He was no worse than the others.

What about Treliving trading for two non contributors at the TDL -- two player who proved to be no better than what we already had?

What about management's multi-year failure to surround Matthews, Marner and Nylander with better players? They gave away Hyman and cannot find a replacement over 5 years. They keep throwing away draft picks and prospects like Minten for players that no one in their right mind would ever dream would be the difference between where we ended up and a Cup.

Once Marner walks for nothing we can turn to the next player to blame. My money is on Rielly.
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It’s never just about Marner’s play. His camp turns everything into a full blown circus. Remember when Matthews locked in that second deal? No sooner was it announced than Darren Ferris was on the air hyping Mitch and trying to steal attention from Auston. It’s the same old routine with these guys, they demand to be coddled, gripe at any hint of disrespect, and manufacture drama out of thin air. They’re completely out of their depth in this market.
 
KW Sluggo said:
They gave away Hyman and cannot find a replacement over 5 years.
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I will die on this hill and I don’t care, but they didn’t get rid of Hyman. He was offered a crazy contract and nothing in his performance suggested he was a 5 mil player. He scored 1 goal in each playoff series with the leafs. 5 series.

The revisionist history on Hyman is complete bullshit. Had he stayed with the leafs his numbers would have been nowhere near what we’ve seen in Edmonton. I firmly believe had he signed anywhere else his numbers would have been very similar to his career averages with the leafs.

Toronto would be no further ahead had Hyman stayed.
 
Joe S. said:
I will die on this hill and I don’t care, but they didn’t get rid of Hyman. He was offered a crazy contract and nothing in his performance suggested he was a 5 mil player. He scored 1 goal in each playoff series with the leafs. 5 series.

The revisionist history on Hyman is complete bullshit. Had he stayed with the leafs his numbers would have been nowhere near what we’ve seen in Edmonton. I firmly believe had he signed anywhere else his numbers would have been very similar to his career averages with the leafs.

Toronto would be no further ahead had Hyman stayed.
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Totally agree. Very hard working player but way overrated for what he did here.
 
The signs were there with Hyman. He was performing at a similar clip to Nylander, albeit with an injury history. He left for Edmonton with a bigger role and he stayed healthy. The rest is history.
 
Joe S. said:
I will die on this hill and I don’t care, but they didn’t get rid of Hyman. He was offered a crazy contract and nothing in his performance suggested he was a 5 mil player. He scored 1 goal in each playoff series with the leafs. 5 series.

The revisionist history on Hyman is complete bullshit. Had he stayed with the leafs his numbers would have been nowhere near what we’ve seen in Edmonton. I firmly believe had he signed anywhere else his numbers would have been very similar to his career averages with the leafs.

Toronto would be no further ahead had Hyman stayed.
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I don't think anyone on the planet would argue that Hyman reaches the numbers he's had with Edmonton (particularly the 22/23 and 23/24 seasons of course) without having McDavid as his centre. But McDavid's also played with a lot of wingers over his career and no non-Draisaitl player has had that type of success either so clearly Hyman was doing something right and there was a good fit there.

I also think it's worth pointing out that Edmonton's usage of Hyman has been quite different than Toronto's. He's been getting top PP time and generally making the best out of those minutes (again, particularly in those two big seasons). That never happened in Toronto. And while he of course played a lot on our top line here he also played considerable minutes on a shutdown unit. In his last season he bounced between the Matthews-Marner line and a 3rd line of Engvall/Kerfoot and Mikheyev.

So I mean in his last season here he had 15 goals and 33 points in 43 games (that was the 56 game regular season). Over 82 games that 28 goals and 62 points. That's with little PP time and while his 2nd most common winger he played with was Ilya Mikheyev (who he actually did produce more offence with than I would have guessed). Still with an opportunity to play a net front position on PP1 and more consistent top-6 minutes like he had in Edmonton it's pretty reasonable to think he'd have played at a 70-point pace, probably even higher really. And that's while still being by far the best defensive winger that Matthews and Marner have had on their LW.

As for playoffs, well yeah he stunk. So did everyone else every year. Who knows what to make of that.

All in all, I very much doubt he scores 83 points in 79 games like he did in 22/23 or 54 goals (plus 16 more in the playoffs) like he did in 23/24, but there were signs of his growing offensive game here (his points per game rate quite literally increased in every season). I was ok with him walking at the time (more because of the length of the deal than the AAV) but it's hard for me to say in hindsight that was the right call.
 
CarltonTheBear said:
All in all, I very much doubt he scores 83 points in 79 games like he did in 22/23 or 54 goals (plus 16 more in the playoffs) like he did in 23/24, but there were signs of his growing offensive game here (his points per game rate quite literally increased in every season). I was ok with him walking at the time (more because of the length of the deal than the AAV) but it's hard for me to say in hindsight that was the right call.
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I think we would all take Hyman now.
 
No doubt Hyman was a black hole on offense for his first few years, but if you didn't see the improvement occurring near the end of his time with the Leafs you must be blind. The guy was driving a third line. And in his last 2 playoff series with the Leafs, in one of them he had just come back from an injury and in the other he was playing on one knee.

I doubt he would ever have scored 50 goals with any other team (including the Leafs) but he would have been a PERFECT fit for the Berube system. Did you see him in the playoffs this year before that injury? He was a wrecking ball.

Leafs couldn't afford a $5.5 million contract at the time but there were rumors he wanted to stay and would have taken less. If that is true, it may go down as one of the biggest mistakes of this era. Second to letting Marner walk for nothing.
 
Looking at Hyman a little more, these are his stats while playing alongside Matthews and Marner in his last 2 seasons (using games played where the trio played a minimum of 6 5-on-5 minutes together, although most of these had them playing 10+):

19/20: 29 GP, 11 goals, 11 assists, 22 points. 82 game pace: 31 goals, 62 points
20/21: 21 GP, 7 goals, 12 assists, 19 points. 82 game pace: 27 goals, 74 points

I didn't particularly feel like picking apart what situation each of the points were scored in but it's safe few of these came on the powerplay where Hyman very rarely played on the top unit anyway. So that's pretty significant non-PP scoring numbers. Would these scoring paces have actually held up if they played together for a full season, who knows. Maybe not. The 20/21 season was also of course unique in that the Leafs played in the Canadian division. But still, generally speaking the guy absolutely produced when he was given top line opportunities. And when he played lower in the line-up he often lead checking units in tough assignments/deployment.

His playoff numbers with us weren't good, but as Chris reminded me injuries played a role in that. In the 2019 playoffs against Boston he had 1 goal and 0 assists in 7 games. It turned out he was playing through an ACL injury that caused him to miss 6 months after surgery. In 2020 he had 3 points in 5 games against Columbus. That feels pretty fine for him, especially considering at even strength that tied him with Nylander, he was 1 behind Matthews, and 1 ahead of Tavares and Marner. 2021 against Montreal was another disappointing 1 goal and 0 assists in 7 games but that time he was coming off an injury that caused him to miss the last month of the season and he almost certainly wasn't 100% for playoffs. In all 3 of those runs he also finished top-2 in hits on the team.

Honestly if anything he was probably underappreciated as a Leaf, and we really should have found a way to bring him back. His biggest concerns were aging and durability and freak hand-injury aside in these Finals those haven't been an issue 4 years into his deal.
 
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