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The Official LEAFS NATION Hockey thread

lgna69xxx

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Thanks for the post's today Doc....... it sure is nice to see this team grow from just a few seasons ago, and with one of the top GM's in all of sports, it is no wonder the success is starting to come. Brain, i mean BRIAN Burke sure has done what he said he was gonna do, tear the team down, start almost completely over (only a few of jfj and cliff f. players remain) build up the farm with a team that plays exactly like the Leafs so when someone goes down to injury, there is someone ready to step in, thus what a abundance of depth, just like he said a playoff team needs. See ya soon to root the Leafs onto yet another victory over the habs in Toronto brother!
 

lgna69xxx

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Thanks, Peter Chiarelli

TORONTO - It was one of the most difficult chats Peter Chiarelli has ever had with a player.

It was Feb. 11, and Chiarelli had just dealt highly-touted prospect Joe Colborne to the Maple Leafs along with a first-round and a conditional second-round draft pick in exchange for veteran defenceman Tomas Kaberle.

During his tenure as general manager of the Boston Bruins, Chiarelli had informed plenty of players they were moving on. Distasteful or not, it goes hand-in-hand with the job.

But this time, it was more emotional than most.

“When I told him he was traded, well, that was a tough one,” Chiarelli said during a phone interview from Boston on Monday. “He’s such a good kid, such a hard worker.”

Almost 10 months later, Chiarelli likely will have the chance to get a first-hand look at just how much that “good kid” has developed when the Bruins face Colborne’s Maple Leafs at the Air Canada Centre.

If he plays, it will be Colborne’s first opportunity to face the team that traded him.

With Mikhail Grabovski having returned to the lineup on Sunday in Anaheim and David Steckel slated to do the same against the Bruins on Wednesday, coach Ron Wilson could have a few difficult decisions ahead when it comes to his cache of available forwards. At the same time, with Colborne having racked up four points in five games alongside Joey Crabb and Matt Frattin, well, why break up a good thing?

From his six-week run among the scoring leaders in the American Hockey League to his impressive albeit brief stint with the Leafs thus far, Colborne’s rapid emergence may have caught some observers off-guard.

But for the man who drafted him 16th overall in the 2008 entry draft for the Bruins, he always expected the gangly kid from Calgary to perform like this.

“I’m not surprised at all,” Chiarelli said, referring to Colborne. “He is a first-round talent who was constantly working toward his dream of the NHL.

“It was tough to let him go, believe me. But we saw a puck-moving defenceman in Kaberle who we felt was a key piece to our title aspirations. In our case, we won the (Stanley) Cup after making the trade, so I guess it was worth it,”

If anyone knows the potential Colborne has, it’s Chiarelli.

Back in 2008, Chiarelli sat in a chilly rink in Cornwall watching Colborne compete in the Centennial Cup for the Camrose Kodiaks, a team with which he collected 90 points in 55 games. The Bruins GM was so impressed by Colborne, the 2008 RBC Canadian Junior A Hockey League Player of the Year, he drafted him a short time later.

Early on there were some rocky times with AHL Providence, the Bruins top farm team. Behind the scenes, however, the organization was constantly working to make him better.

“We stressed a couple of things he needed to work on,” Chiarelli said. “Obviously, the first was his skating. But we also spent a lot of time working with him on how to protect the puck and shield opponents with his big body.”

Message received.

Indeed, in his brief stint as Colborne’s coach with the Marlies, Dallas Eakins quickly learned what Peter Chiarelli already knew: that Joe Colborne had a gnawing desire to one day realize his full potential.

“He’s made huge improvements,” Eakins said. “I think his skating has improved with his strength. And we stressed how effective he can be down low and on the half boards with that big (6-foot-5) body. He could really kill with his passing, kill with his strength.

“The thing is, he wants it bad. He’s always working on his game, watching video, working out, you name it.”

When Colborne was called up to the Leafs, Eakins gave Wilson the heads-up about how well he and Crabb played together with the Marlies. Wilson reunited them with the Leafs, a familiar combination that has allowed Colborne to flourish early on in his NHL career.

Just like Peter Chiarelli figured he might.

http://www.torontosun.com/2011/11/28/bruins-gm-hated-to-trade-colborne

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Doc Holliday

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Joe Colborne

Thanks for posting the article on Joe Colborne. I've started to like him over the past few games. At first, he appeared to be a step slower than everybody else & a bit lost out there on the ice. However, he's been getting used to the NHL & his linemates.....and it shows. He's played very well since his call-up & he's definitely not a liability out there on the ice. Do you know whom he reminds me of? Bobby Smith.

It's unbelievable that Boston let him go. Just the first-rounder & the conditional 2nd or 3rd round pick would have been enough for Tomas Kaberle, who was on his final months of his contract with the Leafs at the time & wasn't going to be re-signed.

Now, the center position is one of the team's strongest positions. Bozak, Grabovski, Lombardi, Connelly, Steckel, Dupuis & Colborne. Since Mikael Grabovski will be UFA at season's end, i'm starting to wonder if he'll be re-signed. Nazem Kadri was also a center at junior, so who knows?
 

Doc Holliday

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Should the Leafs go after Bobby Ryan?

by Damien Cox, The Toronto Star

The reported availability of Bobby Ryan should be of interest to 29 other clubs, not just the Maple Leafs. The kid can score, being No. 2 in the draft to Sidney Crosby has never bothered him and there's a personality there that sell in a bigger hockey market.

Do the Ducks have to move him? No, but they may want to do something soon, and looking further ahead, carrying Ryan's $5.1 million per season cap hit will make the squeeze a little tighter after next season when both Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry become unrestricted free agents. It seems doubtful Anaheim can keep all three.

But that's the longer term view. Short term, the Ducks could fire coach Randy Carlyle, which seems unlikely, or they could shuffle the deck. GM Bob Murray might be of a mind right now to try and recover some of the young assets lost to Toronto in the Francois Beauchemin deal last winter. The Ducks made the playoffs and Beauchemin played well, but now the team's lousy, he's 34 years old and both Joffrey Lupul and cherubic blueliner Jake Gardiner are playing well with the Leafs.

Murray and Brian Burke have done deals before - Anaheim moved J.S. Giguere's monster contract, the Leafs dumped Vesa Toskala and Jason Blake - and it seems some teams are comfortable doing deals with certain others. Look at all the trades Vancouver and Florida have swung in recent seasons. Burke loves Ryan, and indeed, he turned down overtures from Cliff Fletcher in his final months in Anaheim when the Silver Fox was pitching hard for Ryan.

So should the Leafs be interested now? Yes. Does it matter than Ryan's another scoring winger, not a centre? Not really. The Leafs are in the business of acquiring top six forwards as assets. The positional balance can be addressed later. Is Ryan's salary a problem? He's got three more years after this one at $5.1 million. That's hefty, but not a cap crippler for a team like the Leafs.

Which brings us to the cost, and here's the tricky part. Ryan's a 30-35 goal man, a real stylist out there, not surprising for a legendary roller hockey player. But he doesn't really have a physical component to his game, he's not an accomplished penalty killer and he's off to a so-so start this season.

You don't want to overpay, but here's a guy it's easy to get over-excited about. Obviously, a young defenceman would have to be part of a deal, and maybe that's Luke Schenn or Carl Gunnarson or Cody Franson. Nazem Kadri could be in there. Stuart Percy is a young blueliner and Leaf first round playing junior in Mississauga. Nik Kulemin might make sense, but he's having an off-year, too. With the Leafs high in the NHL standings, a 2012 first rounder could come into play.

Some combination of that group might make sense. Perhaps it's Kulemin and Franson for Ryan. Schenn and Kadri? The Leafs have assets, more than in a long time, the result of steady work by Burke and Dave Nonis over the past three years.

You can bet Burke will kick the tires on this one, see if Ryan really is up for grabs. He knows the young man well and believes in him, and he and Murray can do business, with the fact they're a conference apart making it a little easier for both.
 

lgna69xxx

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Always wanted Bobby Ryan to sign in Toronto last summer but now to get him, how much would we have to give up? If only one young dman, (not Schenn) a young prospect and a high draft pick and maybe a current avg offensmen would do the trick, i say a big and hearty OUI!.... lets see if Burke can do some more majic and get us Ryan for that or even cheaper, but after Murray got fleeced by Burke in the Lupul/Gardiner for Beauchemin deal, i doubt it will be as one sided again if it happens at all.

As far as Grabo resigning, i see it happening and you will see him going on a tear now that he is healthy. He was absolutely flying on the ice his first game back from injury in Anaheim. 3 yrs $11-12 mil (of course thats if he puts up 40-50 points and continues to play defensively responsible the rest of the season) What also makes him very valuable is he is one if not thee #1 hardest working and dedicated player in the entire orginization, and having a guy like that is never good to let him walk, as long as his production is there.
 

Doc Holliday

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Always wanted Bobby Ryan to sign in Toronto last summer but now to get him, how much would we have to give up? If only one young dman, (not Schenn) a young prospect and a high draft pick and maybe a current avg offensmen would do the trick, i say a big and hearty OUI!

How about we send them Mike Komisarek, Mathew Lombardi & Cody Franson?
 

lgna69xxx

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Kessel leading all players in Allstar voting

I guess oVechkin is not laughing now, and the only picture he will be taking of Phil at this years Allstar game will have the caption, #1 vote getter. But seriously, even if by the time the ASG comes to Ottawa in a couple months, and Kessel does not get that title, he for sure will be there and not just because the Leafs have to have a player there, actually the Leafs should have at least 3, Kessel, Phaneuf and Lupul. It is great to see Kessel coming into his own as a player with a endless amount of talent, and just needing to mature and realise his hard work both on offense, defense, and offseason training is paying huge dividends, he is on his way to becoming the next big superstar in the NHL. Thank You bOston! :thumb: and TY Brain, i mean Brian Burke for having the balls to make that trade, which i have supported since day one. As well as every trade he has made, which 2 were with boston in which both trades look great for the Leafs. The Kessel trade is also as of now a good trade for boston but the real winner will not be known for several years if both main players, Kessel and Seguin, stay healthy.

http://www.thestar.com/sports/leafs/article/1094436--leafs-kessel-leads-nhl-all-star-voting
 

Doc Holliday

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I guess oVechkin is not laughing now, and the only picture he will be taking of Phil at this years Allstar game will have the caption, #1 vote getter. But seriously, even if by the time the ASG comes to Ottawa in a couple months, and Kessel does not get that title, he for sure will be there and not just because the Leafs have to have a player there, actually the Leafs should have at least 3, Kessel, Phaneuf and Lupul.

If they keep on playing like they are now, all three players should be shoo-ins for the All-Star game. Jake Gardiner will likely make it to the 'prospects' game, and will get some consideration for the Calder, which likely will go to Ryan Nudgent-Hopkins of the Edmonton Oilers.
 

lgna69xxx

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Gardiner will no doubt make the prospects game as he either leads or is a close 2nd to leading all rooks in ice time so far this season. These next 2 games against bOston will be much more competitive than the previous games they played against each other this season, at least i hope, and i do expect them to be. if we win one out of two, i will be happy, win em both and i'm booking my next 2 game trip to the Mecca of Hockey, Toronto Baby!

If they keep on playing like they are now, all three players should be shoo-ins for the All-Star game. Jake Gardiner will likely make it to the 'prospects' game, and will get some consideration for the Calder, which likely will go to Ryan Nudgent-Hopkins of the Edmonton Oilers.
 

Merlot

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Hey Fellow REAL Hockey Fans,

6-3 Bruins

On the positive side, you have to commend the Leafs for closing the gap in the last meeting from 7 to 3. :D


Boston 6 Toronto 3; Bruins Alone In First Place. :thumb: :cool:

Well, it was a close game for a while. The Bruins let the Leafs think they could play with them for a couple of periods then showed the Leafs who the real class of the division is by burying the Leafs in the 3rd period...IN TORONTO. This was game 13 in a row where the Stanley Cup Champions have not lost in regulation. Now with the Bruins alone in first place in the Northeast division the leafs face a second game against the Bruins in Boston having been unable to get closer than 3 goals down in all three games head to head.

Actually it was a good and close game for a while. But the Leafs just weren't able to hold on for all three periods, even at a time when Toronto has been playing fairly well and winning against some good teams. It would seem to show Boston is really just that much better.

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Cheers,

Merlot
 

Doc Holliday

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Uh....what's this post doing in this thread? Why stir up trouble where there isn't any? Shouldn't this post be in the 'Free for all' thread?
 

lgna69xxx

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Say it aint so, Doc..... merlot is just being merlot and being hypocritical again.... he is never a S**T Disturber ya know, well, not in his mind. :crazy:

Leafs played very well for a up and coming team....bOston is one of the best in the NHL and if not for 3 posts, and a empty netter, the score could of easily been in favor of the Leafs.... not disappointed at all.... my boys played well and will learn from a loss like this, lets hope they rebound saturday, and if not, they are still a playoff team this season, bank on it!



Uh....what's this post doing in this thread? Why stir up trouble where there isn't any? Shouldn't this post be in the 'Free for all' thread?
 
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lgna69xxx

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Excellent read about last night and the Leafs bright future in the "New NHL"

The truth is that Brian Burke and Ron Wilson have been waiting for games like this for three years.

They’ll let the chattering classes call them the biggest games of their tenure or the biggest November games in the better part of a decade. That’s not the point.

Wilson, the Toronto Maple Leafs head coach, has called the home-and-home games against the defending Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins a measuring stick and since it’s come at a time when they’re stirring the embers in the hockey Hot Stove, the seemingly logical conclusion is his general manager, Burke, is using these two games to zero in on specific needs.


Yet in some ways Burke is in a position similar to that of Alex Anthopoulos, the Blue Jays general manager, who was a between-periods visitor to Burke’s booth at the Air Canada Centre. Asked if he had a philosophical predisposition toward judging his team’s needs even at an early stage of the season through games against a team he viewed as a measuring stick, Anthopoulos responded he wouldn’t because, in a 162-game schedule, one or even three games is too small a sample size. And that’s before you factor in “pitchers you face, etc.”

Burke, who studies his peers in other sports, must surely have viewed Wednesday night’s 6-3 loss to the Boston Bruins in the first game of a home-and-home series with an acute understanding of the matchup presented. The Leafs, after all, are without their presumed No. 1 goaltender, James Reimer, and without contributions from the useful Colby Armstrong, Mike Brown, Matthew Lombardi and – deep breath, here – a rejuvenated Mike Komisarek, all of whom are injured.

And the fact is that the Leafs’ needs won’t change regardless of the outcome of these two games. They still need another first-line forward, preferably a centre with a bit of size, and Burke probably already knows what it will cost if he wants to help stir those embers and aim for somebody like Bobby Ryan. If anything is determined in these next few games, it might be a pecking order of moves to get his team some salary cap room for an acquisition.

Measuring stick? The guess here is Burke likely smiled when he heard Wilson drop that nugget, stress the importance of the games to a team full of young players, then follow it up by saying he wasn’t interested in hearing excuses about injuries, either.

Wednesday night was a far cry from the two previous games between the teams, in which the Bruins outscored the Leafs 13-2. The Leafs scored first, even though the Bruins had a wide edge early, getting their 11th power-play goal in 24 opportunities.

In fact, if anything, the Bruins might be feeling even better about themselves, not only because they had a 12-0-1 record in November that represented the franchise’s first calendar month without a loss since Jan., 1969, because they were able to use their speed through the neutral zone as effectively as the Leafs.

“It seems like a rivalry is being created between us and them,” said the Bruins' Milan Lucic. “They definitely spent more quality time in our zone this time. We spoke a lot about how we needed to get things straightened out in our zone against them.”

The big, bad, Bruins didn’t bring a hammer to this game, they brought a paring knife, particularly around Jonas Gustavsson’s crease with a pair of goals on high, surgical shots. The only place they used brute force on the Leafs was in the faceoff circle, where they are the best in the NHL and where in this game they flirted with a 65-per-cent success rate.

The third anniversary of Burke’s ascension to Leafs GM passed earlier this week, with precious little partisan back and forth on the airwaves and the Interweb. Instead, there is a sense among Leafs fans that something good is developing here, not first place in the division good but something more than a two-week, photo-finish fight to ninth place. This is a new NHL, with an emphasis on speed and puck support and less time for wasted thuggery. The Leafs aren’t playing catch-up; rather, they are part of the vanguard, and have moved from rebuilding to bolstering.

If the rest of us can see that, rest assured that Burke does, too.


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/spor...ings-become-clearer-in-defeat/article2255993/
 

lgna69xxx

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Not sure this is a great idea, not with head hunter lucic, well, and half the bruins team, in the lineup. But overall he give us a better chance to win than any of our goalies as he is the #1

Breaking news:

James Reimer stated to the press this morning that he'll be starting tonight's game against Boston. I've just been told that it's official. Reimer starts tonight.
 

Doc Holliday

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Not sure this is a great idea, not with head hunter lucic, well, and half the bruins team, in the lineup. But overall he give us a better chance to win than any of our goalies as he is the #1

I do agree that it gives the impression that Optimus Reim is being thrown out at the lions. However, it also shows the rest of the team that this coach is serious about winning hockey games & will do all out to achieve his goals.
 

lgna69xxx

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Quite true and my exact thoughts at first... Wilson is growing as much as a coach these days as is his team as players, maturing together? Oui!

I do agree that it gives the impression that Optimus Reim is being thrown out at the lions. However, it also shows the rest of the team that this coach is serious about winning hockey games & will do all out to achieve his goals.
 

Doc Holliday

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Leafs send down Joe Colborne

The kid has just been sent down to the Marlies after an impressive stint with the big club. This likely means that Colby Armstrong will dress for tomorrow's game against the Capitals.
 

lgna69xxx

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Great learning experience for the former #1 draft pick that Burke insisted he got as part of the Kaberle deal. He will be even more hungry now to work on his game and get back to the "show"
Leafs send down Joe Colborne

The kid has just been sent down to the Marlies after an impressive stint with the big club. This likely means that Colby Armstrong will dress for tomorrow's game against the Capitals.
 
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