The Official LEAFS NATION Hockey thread
- Thread starter Doc Holliday
- Start date
I'll give you a scoop......
The Leafs will host the 2017 Winter Classic!!!
Even Gary Bettman doesn't know it yet!!
Go Leafs Go!!! :thumb:
The Leafs will host the 2017 Winter Classic!!!
Even Gary Bettman doesn't know it yet!!
Go Leafs Go!!! :thumb:
Jonathan Drouin, the 3rd overall pick in the 2013 draft chosen by Tampa, has asked to be traded following being sent down to the minors. According to Jimmy Hascup of USA Today Sports, he'd be perfect for the Leafs:
Drouin would be perfect for the rebuilding Maple Leafs to add to their stable of young forwards that includes Mitch Marner, William Nylander and Kasperi Kapanen. He could play now, under the tutelage of coach Mike Babcock and be a significant addition to the team's rebuilding process. The Maple Leafs have been collecting young assets, and could easily part ways with one if they recognize Drouin as a potential game-changer. Drouin also was born in Quebec and played for the Halifax Mooseheads in Nova Scotia.
Drouin would be perfect for the rebuilding Maple Leafs to add to their stable of young forwards that includes Mitch Marner, William Nylander and Kasperi Kapanen. He could play now, under the tutelage of coach Mike Babcock and be a significant addition to the team's rebuilding process. The Maple Leafs have been collecting young assets, and could easily part ways with one if they recognize Drouin as a potential game-changer. Drouin also was born in Quebec and played for the Halifax Mooseheads in Nova Scotia.
Maple Leafs making case for Mike Babcock as NHL’s coach of the year
by James Mirtle, Globe and Mail
When the Toronto Maple Leafs went for the big fish and signed the $50-million deal in the summer, they weren’t expecting a quick return on their investment.
Nothing about this rebuild was supposed to be quick.
Bringing in Mike Babcock was an eight-year enterprise, and his unique skills as one of the best coaches in the NHL was going to be most useful to the Leafs a few seasons down the line, when they were presumably contending for something more than a lottery pick.
However, the Leafs are getting more than they imagined in Year 1.
They’re getting wins.
Only 37 games into his tenure in Toronto, Babcock has transformed a makeshift roster that no one had any expectations for into a possible playoff team. After beating one of the best teams in the league in the St. Louis Blues on Saturday, the Leafs have a 14-8-5 record since the start of November.
That’s a 100-point pace and the third-best record in the Eastern Conference in that span.
If not for an absolutely brutal start to the season from netminder Jonathan Bernier, the Leafs would now be in the thick of a playoff race. As it is, they are slowly making up ground and have games in hand on almost every team in the conference.
If they play as well as they have in the past two months the rest of the way, they’re tracking to finish with 92 points, which should put them in the wild-card conversation.
Do that and Mike Babcock deserves serious consideration for the Jack Adams as coach of the year.
Which, absurdly, he has never won.
There’s obviously a lot of season left and a lot of opportunity for this great Leafs run to go sideways. But their play of late hasn’t been a mirage the way it was in so many other recent seasons.
Under Babcock, the Leafs have improved from one of the worst possession teams in the NHL (45 per cent) to league average (50 per cent), making one of the biggest jumps in the league (along with Buffalo and Montreal).
The Leafs have also gone from allowing the most high-quality scoring chances against in the NHL (14 a game) to the fourth fewest.
On special teams, they are first in shots attempted on the power play (up from 25th last season) and second in shot attempts allowed on the penalty kill (up from 26th).
The list of improvements is longer than that, but that’s a glimpse of how dramatic some of the shifts have been. In every case, the progress is primarily a credit to systemic and deployment changes brought in by the coaching staff.
They also deserve credit for the fact so many players look better than the past few aimless seasons. James van Riemsdyk, Leo Komarov, Tyler Bozak and Jake Gardiner lead the way there, but it’s been a nearly team-wide transformation.
All that said, there’s a lot working against Babcock winning the Jack Adams this year.
His roster isn’t very good, and it will only get worse when Leafs management sells off its rental players before the Feb. 29 trade deadline.
His goaltenders have been injured and inconsistent, and any coach who picks up votes in April likely had a lot of help from his netminder.
Making the playoffs remains a long shot, with even the most bullish analysts giving them somewhere in the neighbourhood of a 30-per-cent chance. Entering Sunday’s games, the Leafs were still seven points back of a wild-card spot and had the fewest regulation-or-overtime wins, which is a key tiebreaker.
Understandably, voters for the year-end awards also almost never give consideration to coaches or players with teams that missed the postseason, regardless of how low expectations were going into the year. (Last season, coaches of non-playoff teams received only one of the 75 first-place Jack Adams votes.)
There are a lot of other worthy candidates for the award, too, such as Lindy Ruff in Dallas, Barry Trotz in Washington – another coach who has inexplicably never won – and even Darryl Sutter in L.A. Their teams should all make the playoffs by large margins, and they have established track records to back up that success.
Too often in recent years the Jack Adams has gone to a one-off: a coach whose underdog team had a fluky, percentage-driven run to success that wasn’t going to be sustainable the next season. The last three winners – Paul MacLean, Patrick Roy and Bob Hartley – all fit that description.
Babcock wouldn’t.
If the Leafs somehow keep this up and make the postseason, he would be a fitting winner – and it would finally right a wrong that has for some reason kept him from the trophy for so long.
Even if they don’t, Babcock should still get plenty of votes.
He’s earned his paycheque so far.
Leafs making case for Mike Babcock as NHL Coach-of-the-Year
by James Mirtle, Globe and Mail
When the Toronto Maple Leafs went for the big fish and signed the $50-million deal in the summer, they weren’t expecting a quick return on their investment.
Nothing about this rebuild was supposed to be quick.
Bringing in Mike Babcock was an eight-year enterprise, and his unique skills as one of the best coaches in the NHL was going to be most useful to the Leafs a few seasons down the line, when they were presumably contending for something more than a lottery pick.
However, the Leafs are getting more than they imagined in Year 1.
They’re getting wins.
Only 37 games into his tenure in Toronto, Babcock has transformed a makeshift roster that no one had any expectations for into a possible playoff team. After beating one of the best teams in the league in the St. Louis Blues on Saturday, the Leafs have a 14-8-5 record since the start of November.
That’s a 100-point pace and the third-best record in the Eastern Conference in that span.
If not for an absolutely brutal start to the season from netminder Jonathan Bernier, the Leafs would now be in the thick of a playoff race. As it is, they are slowly making up ground and have games in hand on almost every team in the conference.
If they play as well as they have in the past two months the rest of the way, they’re tracking to finish with 92 points, which should put them in the wild-card conversation.
Do that and Mike Babcock deserves serious consideration for the Jack Adams as coach of the year.
Which, absurdly, he has never won.
There’s obviously a lot of season left and a lot of opportunity for this great Leafs run to go sideways. But their play of late hasn’t been a mirage the way it was in so many other recent seasons.
Under Babcock, the Leafs have improved from one of the worst possession teams in the NHL (45 per cent) to league average (50 per cent), making one of the biggest jumps in the league (along with Buffalo and Montreal).
The Leafs have also gone from allowing the most high-quality scoring chances against in the NHL (14 a game) to the fourth fewest.
On special teams, they are first in shots attempted on the power play (up from 25th last season) and second in shot attempts allowed on the penalty kill (up from 26th).
The list of improvements is longer than that, but that’s a glimpse of how dramatic some of the shifts have been. In every case, the progress is primarily a credit to systemic and deployment changes brought in by the coaching staff.
They also deserve credit for the fact so many players look better than the past few aimless seasons. James van Riemsdyk, Leo Komarov, Tyler Bozak and Jake Gardiner lead the way there, but it’s been a nearly team-wide transformation.
All that said, there’s a lot working against Babcock winning the Jack Adams this year.
His roster isn’t very good, and it will only get worse when Leafs management sells off its rental players before the Feb. 29 trade deadline.
His goaltenders have been injured and inconsistent, and any coach who picks up votes in April likely had a lot of help from his netminder.
Making the playoffs remains a long shot, with even the most bullish analysts giving them somewhere in the neighbourhood of a 30-per-cent chance. Entering Sunday’s games, the Leafs were still seven points back of a wild-card spot and had the fewest regulation-or-overtime wins, which is a key tiebreaker.
Understandably, voters for the year-end awards also almost never give consideration to coaches or players with teams that missed the postseason, regardless of how low expectations were going into the year. (Last season, coaches of non-playoff teams received only one of the 75 first-place Jack Adams votes.)
There are a lot of other worthy candidates for the award, too, such as Lindy Ruff in Dallas, Barry Trotz in Washington – another coach who has inexplicably never won – and even Darryl Sutter in L.A. Their teams should all make the playoffs by large margins, and they have established track records to back up that success.
Too often in recent years the Jack Adams has gone to a one-off: a coach whose underdog team had a fluky, percentage-driven run to success that wasn’t going to be sustainable the next season. The last three winners – Paul MacLean, Patrick Roy and Bob Hartley – all fit that description.
Babcock wouldn’t.
If the Leafs somehow keep this up and make the postseason, he would be a fitting winner – and it would finally right a wrong that has for some reason kept him from the trophy for so long.
Even if they don’t, Babcock should still get plenty of votes.
He’s earned his paycheque so far.
Leafs making case for Mike Babcock as NHL Coach-of-the-Year
I have mixed feelings about the current season. I expected it to hurt. A lot of pain. A lot of losing. October seemed to be an indication that it was going to happen as Babcock and management had said it would. I was ready to suffer for at least one or two other years and accept losing in order to see success in the future. The end justifies the means, as they say. But i noticed in October that although they won only 1 or 2 games, they actually didn't play this badly. Sure, they struggled to score goals, but that was the story for most teams around the league. But i also noticed that Bernier (Sorry Bernsie!) was losing some games by himself by his inability to stop a beachball and letting in goals from dump-ins at the red line. I then told myself "Geez! If goaltending was a bit better and Bernier would stop shots that usually don't go it, the Leafs would probably be able to win half their games." And then Reimer took over and the Leafs began to win and have had a very good record since November, being the 3rd-best team in the conference! So that's suffering?? What the hell is going on? Part of me welcomed 'suffering' since it would mean that the Leafs would get a good chance to draft a heck of a future good player at the entry draft in June. One of the top 5 picks, hopefully. Who knows, maybe future superstar Auston Matthews! But as the article mentionned, the Leafs have suddenly become a playoffs team, beating the league's best teams on any given night and playing very good hockey!! They are one of the hardest working teams in the entire league! My buddy JC was right all along about the greatness of Mike Babcock!!! :thumb:
And i remember being in attendance for their first two games of the season. The first one was against Montreal, the second against Ottawa. The Leafs lost both games, but i told people that against Montreal, the Leafs could have easily won that game had it not been for a great performance by Carey Price and a couple of fluke goals against them. Same thing against the Senators when they ran into a wall named Craig Anderson! That's when i told myself "You know what? They're not as bad as people seem to think they are."
And i remember being in attendance for their first two games of the season. The first one was against Montreal, the second against Ottawa. The Leafs lost both games, but i told people that against Montreal, the Leafs could have easily won that game had it not been for a great performance by Carey Price and a couple of fluke goals against them. Same thing against the Senators when they ran into a wall named Craig Anderson! That's when i told myself "You know what? They're not as bad as people seem to think they are."
Quite true. And teams will start having more & more injuries as this grueling season goes on. The habs last season were the team with the least injuries during the entire season. Not having injuries to most of your best players is a heck of an advantage for any team. Now the habs have had injuries like the rest of the season for once and have been struggling mightily. Fans and pundits have been wondering what the hell has gone wrong since last season.....how can a team rely so much on their star goaltender and on a pint-sized third-line player to revive the offense. The answer is incredibly simple: this year they have injuries, just like the rest of the league. Something they didn't have to deal with for most of last season.
Other than to their goaltending, injuries to the rest of the Leafs players (were it to happen) would not affect the team as much as it would other teams throughout the league.
I have a feeling that the rest of the season should be a lot of fun. Maybe not for some teams such as the habs if Carey Price doesn't return to duty soon enough. By the way, he probably will be out longer than he was supposed to. He hasn't felt well enough to begin skating yet.
The habbies are not as good as that 9-0 start which i kept saying but it fell on deaf ears around here, except your's, MISTER Holiday
Could Gallagher be the savior?
Everything was going in during that 9-0 streak! The habs where the highest scoring team in the league and Dale Wiese (a typical fourth-liner!) was on his way to score 100 goals!!
By the way, PK Subban has only 1 goal. He scored that lone goal back in November against the Leafs and it was questionable if the puck had went in. They had to go to replay and i'm still not certain that puck was in.
As for Gallagher possibly being 'the' savior......if he is 'the' savior, then they should renegotiate his contract and take the 'C' off Pacioretty's sweater!
Pacioretty should never have been the captain, the players voted him in for crying out loud lol.... thats never a good sign as captains are almost always appointed by the coaches and management. Dion Phaneuf is a way better Captain than maxie paxie will ever be and speaking of Dion, he is doing very well under MISTER "Best Coach in the World" Babcock :thumb:
I agree, but the habs had to name a captain after spending an entire season without one. But who else? Can't be PK, who's one of the most immature and selfish players in the league. Gallagher too young. Other candidates were 4th-liners, which is a no-no for a captain. Markov didn't want it. Pacioretty was the logical choice by elimination. I feel for the guy, he doesn't know what he's got himself into.
As for Phaneuf, i agree he's doing a heck of a job as Leafs captain. He's also playing much better. For once, he's being used properly by Babcock.
By the way, the other day during a conversation with a habs fan he asked me to list 10 defencemen i'd prefer having on my team over PK Subban. I named 20. I should have included Phaneuf. There isn't a single thing Subban can do that Phaneuf can't, plus Phaneuf isn't the league's giveaway king and doesn't take stupid penalties on a consistent basis. He's mind is on hockey and not on off-ice media endorsements. He's not a camera-chaser. And Dion Phaneuf is a leader and a captain, something PK Subban will NEVER be. And he's being paid $2 million less per season??? A bargain!!! Give me Phaneuf anytime!!!
Totally agree!
As always MISTER Holliday, you are the voice of reason.
So tell me this, what do we do with Kadri?
As always MISTER Holliday, you are the voice of reason.
So tell me this, what do we do with Kadri?
Babcock likes him very much. So i say we keep him unless we get an offer we can't refuse.
But what kind of contract will he command? Isn't he UFA after this season? He is gonna want a long term deal, will he take the hometwon discount or another short termer for bigger $ per season?
He'll still be RFA after this season. He's currently only 25 years old. He needs to be 27 years old to be UFA or have played at least 7 years in the NHL. Which is why it's a mistake to rush young players (like the habs did with Galchenyuk and Edmonton with all their young top guns) into the league before the age of 20. They risk losing them sooner than later. They also risk having to pay them a lot more $$ than if they would have been patient with them.
What he'll receive depends on how he'll perform this season. The Leafs are willing to be fair with him contractually, but if his agent tries to play hardball and overprice him, they'll go to arbitration with him or send him packing if a decent offer comes along.
Well, well, the top Canadian team in the NHL just won another one!!! 4-0 against the Anaheim Ducks!!! Another shutout by Jonathan "Big Game" Bernier!!!! He was great in the first period and kept the Leafs in the game, but the Leafs took over in the 2nd and never looked back, irritating the hell out of has-been Ryan Getzlaff in the process!!! And, even Roman Polak got in a fight!!!
I have to admit that Iggy was correct in regards to Bernier and he never gave up on him. But why am i surprised at this?? When has Iggy ever really been wrong?? The guy knows his hockey!!! He knows his hockey as much as he knows how to organize great parties!!!
I have to admit that Iggy was correct in regards to Bernier and he never gave up on him. But why am i surprised at this?? When has Iggy ever really been wrong?? The guy knows his hockey!!! He knows his hockey as much as he knows how to organize great parties!!!
Congratulations to Uncle Leo Komarov for being named to his first all-star game!! He's having a heck of a season! Tyler Bozak could have also got the honor, but Komarov is going instead and i'm okay with that also!! :thumb:
Haha, you always make me laugh bro. But yes, BIG GAME BERNIER was spot on last night and showed some of that wonderful pedigree he has. If he can now play consistently and not let in a softie every game, the Leafs will be a force in a couple years when they are ready.
Well, well, the top Canadian team in the NHL just won another one!!! 4-0 against the Anaheim Ducks!!! Another shutout by Jonathan "Big Game" Bernier!!!! He was great in the first period and kept the Leafs in the game, but the Leafs took over in the 2nd and never looked back, irritating the hell out of has-been Ryan Getzlaff in the process!!! And, even Roman Polak got in a fight!!!
I have to admit that Iggy was correct in regards to Bernier and he never gave up on him. But why am i surprised at this?? When has Iggy ever really been wrong?? The guy knows his hockey!!! He knows his hockey as much as he knows how to organize great parties!!!
Huge and hearty Congrats to Leo! Word has it MISTER Babs loves the guy and who wouldnt? Comes to work every day with his lunchbox and gets down and dirty in practice, nonstop relentless in games and has a ton of talent that most never realised. Wasn't someone around here who has gone awol again, chirping you know things are bad when Leo Komorov leads your team in scoring (or near the top)????
Newsflash, the Leafs may not make the playoffs but they are on pace for over a 100 point season since Nov 1. "IF" and it is a huge "IF", the Leafs make the playoffs, Leo will get some MVP votes if this keeps up and BABS surely will get coach of the year, amazing he has never won the Jack Adams yet, simply amazing!!!
Newsflash, the Leafs may not make the playoffs but they are on pace for over a 100 point season since Nov 1. "IF" and it is a huge "IF", the Leafs make the playoffs, Leo will get some MVP votes if this keeps up and BABS surely will get coach of the year, amazing he has never won the Jack Adams yet, simply amazing!!!
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