Thorner

Also forgive me but I thought that was most everyone’s pass fail line: correct me if I’m wrong

Failed? Or failed to regress as little offensively as KA thought they would upon committing to team wide defence? I’m not sure I could classify the forwards as failing when they are putting up score differentials in the ball park of last season If the bar for the forwards was “fix the goalie output and also score like lightning similar to last season” I’d argue the GM potentially set them *up* to fail. And then the failing isn’t on the players at all. (This is a hypothetical obviously. Say we finish 41-41. But we are 6-6. There’s a lot of runway left)

And presumably took the necessary steps to supplement the roster to make up for the cache we’d expend in getting our goalie output to average levels? Or else, smartly deduced that internal improvement would be sufficient to organically grow said cache? At least it’s good to know figuring out whether the goaltending approach was prudent is rather easy: we can see how the team performs

Seems pretty in line with law of averages: 20th league wide by points % last season, 20th league wide by points % this season. We just have altered the way we are achieving it. we certainly didn’t advance the roster much in the offseason beyond where we finished last season: it was mostly a run-back. I would say that league relative, we clearly supplemented on the low end.

Nothing was ever going to be “free”, no strings attached. A payment was necessary, a sacrifice, give to get. People were acting like we could simply improve our team commitment to defence, improve the goalies by doing it, and sacrifice none of our offence in the process: It doesn’t work like that. We didn’t have to pay an asset, sacrifice assets to upgrade the goaltending by bringing in talent from the outside, but a price would still need to be paid nonetheless

Is 17 out of 32 a pass? If the team is average, is that a pass? Actually asking Why did people think the scoring would remain at an elite level, when so much had to be committed to team defence to ensure the goalies could put up average numbers?

I jinxed it Damn Leafs

Here this will help

Haha im just saying: A) it absolutely won’t happen B) I honestly wouldn’t really have much interest in supporting a team that would be knowingly rostering a player to the detriment of said team, just to get said player an arbitrary milestone. That’s exactly what removing him from the lineup / him stepping away at that point would be saying. So I would actually follow through. But I cannot see that truly happening

A) that sidestepped the question B) if KO gets removed after he hits 1000 I will stop watching games this year, that’s my bet with you

Ya that’s where we were at - it’s just not a spot for me right now where my eye test lines up with the advanced numbers (and honestly, usually they do). Maybe he’s getting favourable matchups or something, maybe my eyes are deceiving me, or maybe the numbers are just wrong - but I’ve seen him look pretty horrendous at times, and overall pretty decent. Dahlin to me has been good, with a lot more obviously to give The “number one D in the league” thing frankly weakens the stats’ case / makes me dig my feet in more in this situation IMO because he had clearly has not been close to that in any category. He’s obviously has a great ratio if that’s what the numbers say, but I’m definitely seeing correlation then more than causation - wouldn’t surprise me over a small sample size

@Randall Flagg^

LoLeafs

I can’t really read the charts in full but I’d also say Dahlin has been a fair bit better than Power so far, and the charts seems to almost say otherwise so I’ve got a bit of a disconnect here I guess

No precedent yet, but that could change I suppose. But I wouldn’t bet on it

Like I said, you can get Buffalo-Ullmark numbers with a lesser guy if the defence is great Granted that’s a small sample size from JJ

Good team D improves goaltending but it goes both ways: it’s not a bag of generic, indistinguishable tenders where the ones on Boston win the vezina and the ones on last year’s Buffalo Sabres sit 90th in expected goals: there’s still a spectrum of available talent. Ullmark is a nice one and done example as he was good here, but great in Boston. But he wasn’t UPL here. UPL wouldn’t be Ullmark in Boston, he’d probably improve to Buffalo Ullmark, though It’s just both: your team D improves goaltending output, and also…your rostered goalies improve your goaltending output

Just for discussion purposes. Kulich seems to be most controversial in terms of if he’s the guy who’s going to give us the best chance to win, now The 10 set spots dudacek just mentioned are still there: Skinner/Thompson/Tuch/Peterka/Cozens/Greenway/Mittelstadt/Girgensons/Krebs/Okposo : Okposo had basically just been replaced with Kulich in the tweet, instead. Benson/Savoie swapped. Utility guy Jost finding a regular shift because VO squandered. Would it be better to have Kulich in for KO? There’s basically 3 RW spots there I have no idea what to do with/how it will or should shake out, with: Jost, VO, KO, Savoie, and fan favourite Kulich in the mix in theory but maybe Kulich actually isn’t. It’ll probably be Jost, KO, Savoie in, but there’s a chance Jost of all people is the only true top 12 guy in the mix among that 5

That’s true

Ya exactly (sorry was still editing). It serves your point: at least they could overcome their team wide defensive issues through raw scoring in the past and now even that seems to have dried up I think being such a good regular season team recently I suspect they put it together more so than they have (before crashing and burning in the playoffs, of course)..but maybe they won’t do even that. Interesting to watch.

Vegas also scores in waves from multiple lines which served them well in the playoffs as they were rolling 4. They had/have a very underrated 6 strong on D, too. Their actual talent on D last season was very apparent Edmonton just refuses to surround McDavid / Draisaitl with depth scoring on other lines. Toronto too is becoming increasingly one-note offensively - which is trouble as you point out particularly because they struggle locking down on D - now they are finding it difficult to overcome that with raw scoring even in the regular season

I guess KA did?

Ya it’s definitely more about when than who, when it comes to nhl scheduling

We have a designated fighter. It’s Cozens, he drew the short straw

I too find it a bit odd, but if the results are there from the team at large, I won’t argue with it. They can run in the mold of the USNTDP for all I care, the only thing that’s relevant to me is that the expectations don’t change - it’s pretty much my only argument I care about. They don’t get to undercut their own artificially by willfully going super young at every opportunity. When a young player goes in, I choose to believe it’s because they believe it’s cause that player gives them the best chance to win