kipwinger

The entire "Toronto just wants to play offense" narrative is completely contrived. One of the first things Keefe did after taking over was change up the defensive scheme because TO had been terrible defensively. Dubas is also on record as saying that (I'm paraphrasing) he'd love to have the biggest, meanest, grittiest, most skilled team in the league. But if he can't have them all then skill is the most important of those things. As I've stated elsewhere, Tampa is one of the most potent offensive teams in the league, with a coach strongly committed to analytics, and nobody claims they only play "one way hockey". Nobody competent enough to get a job coaching in the NHL thinks you don't have to play defense. It's about competitive advantage. If your game changing talent is defensive, maybe shot suppression and shutdown goaltending becomes the cornerstone of your team. But if, like Toronto, your elite talent is offensive (I'd say Tavares, Matthews, Marner, Reilly, and Nylander qualify here) then it's probably not unreasonable for a GM and coach to want to take advantage of that in their game planning.

Wow, so it wasn't even behind closed doors? Yikes.

I tend to think that if you've got that kind of personnel you don't have to sacrifice one for the other. Look at Tampa last year. Obviously high octane offense, but they weren't a bad defensive team either. The Leafs have that kind of talent. I think the challenge for every coach if figuring out the right combination of offense to defense that best suits your personnel. If you've got no offensively capable players you kind have to shut things down defensively. If you've got lots of high end offensive players you probably have defend a little less. I'm not sure if TO were defending too much or not. What I do know is that their elite offensive talent wasn't changing games the way it should, and that their personnel on defense were better than their collective effort.

I totally agree, but I just don't think it's a personnel problem. They weren't very good on the powerplay all season either, but I don't see anyone saying they lack good offensive players.

I don't agree with that though. Aside from Muzzin, Ceci is also a solid defensive player, and Babs couldn't shut up about how much he loved Reilly's game (and we all know Babs can't stand an all offense player). Of the two young guys, Liljegren is more offensive (and he's still in the AHL rounding out his game) while Dermott is a solid two-way defender. Only Barrie is what you'd consider a pure "offensive defenseman" and you need some guys like that, otherwise your powerplay will suck. While that defense isn't top five in the league, it's certainly top 10-12 and should not be used as a scapegoat here. In years past we heard over and over and over about how to win a Cup you need elite talent at center, a true 1D, scoring depth, and a goalie that can keep you in games in the playoffs. The Leafs had all of that under Babs. As someone said on Twitter, he was handed a Ferrari and complained that it couldn't win a monster truck rally. On top of that, he is by all accounts a huge prick so players didn't want him around, and finally he threw his GM under the bus at the end of last season. Add all that together and you have a recipe for what transpired. Edit: Forgot about Justin Holl, who is also a solid defensively responsible defender, with a little bit of offense. A lot like a Dekeyser.

As one might expect, I have no interest in Babs. I think bringing him on would probably improve the team, but only marginally given our talent level, and we'd end up looking a lot like the Wings from 2012-2015 (i.e. a handful of decent players grinding games to a halt to win). In a more general sense one has to wonder about Babs' overall approach after this debacle in TO. That's as winning a roster as you're ever gonna get, and to have the results he's had has to leave you wondering what's going on? He's got all the offense a guy could ask for, in all different varieties. I'd agree that moving on from guys like JVR and Kadri was perhaps short sighted, but it's not like they were replaced with bums. Their defense WAS weak a couple years ago, so Dubas went out and acquired genuine top four talent in Muzzin, Barrie, and Ceci and they've done well developing Dermott and Liljegren as well. Their goalie situation isn't great, but their starter is good and I think it's pretty thin to blame this dumpster fire on a backup goalie. Like I said, this is as good a roster as most coaches will have in their entire careers. Which brings me to... Peter Laviolette. Won a Cup in Carolina with absolutely nothing. Went to the Cup finals with a good, but not spectacular roster in Philly and lost to a dynasty team. Then took a good, but not spectacular, Nashville team to the finals and lost to another dynasty team. He's actually done what Babs always gets credit for (i.e. win with thin rosters), he's got just as many Cups as Babs in just as many tries, and is the only guy to ever beat Babcock in the Olympics (for people who think that matters). If he's available, I'd be more than thrilled to see Laviolette behind Detroit's bench. I've been a fan of the guy's for a really long time, and I'd love to see an offensive coach take advantage of this team's speed and skill going forward.

Couple of weeks ago I was talking to my dad complaining that the Wings are so conservative that they'd rather have a guy who has no chance of scoring than a guy who has no chance of defending. I was lamenting the fact that there are always guys available who can score, but who can't do much else; and that rather than stockpile 200 Darren Helm types we should maybe take a flier on a guy with offense. I was thinking another Vanek...so basically Jason Spezza. And then we traded for Perlini and Fabbri. So they did the exact thing I was asking for, but in a way I wasn't. So I sorta HAVE to like these trades...but I don't feel good about it.

Bowey looking pretty good in that sequence.

But why not use Ericsson for that?

I don't mean this in a s***ty way, real question: Why is Alex Biega on this team?

NBC on-ice guy just said "your level of comfortability". Yeesh.

I genuinely like them both. At least they're both sensible. I'd rather see understated sweaters than something like that last one the Wings wore. WAY too much going on there.

Either way, the overall point is that Detroit has general drafted pretty good the last handful of years. At the very least, our drafting during that span hasn't been anything like a disadvantage. However the fact that we basically don't have a single decent player over the age of 26 might better explain our current predicament.

Yup I got that Boeser's draft position wrong, don't know what I was looking at there. Edited the earlier post to reflect his actual draft position. Overall we still drafted better than Vancouver though.

Not really. Here's a quick head to head. I'm not super familiar with VAN's farm club so I limited it to guys already on the NHL roster and/or 1st round picks. 2013: Horvat (9th overall) vs. Mantha (20th) and Bertuzzi (58th). Despite worst draft position we got the best player (Mantha) and the better quantity. Give VAN some credit for getting a top center, but we still win especially when considering the draft position. 2014: Virtanen (6th) and Shinkaruk (23rd) vs. Larkin (15th) and Ehn (106th). This is a win for Detroit, obviously. Despite drafting twice in the first round VAN got a player they want to trade and one that is stuck in the AHL. 2015: Boeser (23rd) vs. Svech (19th). Win for VAN. Easily. 2016: Olli Juolevi (5th) vs. Cholowski (20th) and Hronek (53rd). This is laughably lopsided. Win Detroit. 2017: Pettersson (5th) vs. Rasmussen (9th). Win VAN, but look at the draft position. We couldn't have taken Pettersson and nobody drafted after him is as good as he is. 2018: Hughes (7th) vs. Zadina (6th): Win VAN, no caveats. 2019: Podkolzin (10th) vs. Seider (6th). This one is too early to tell. Conclusions: In these seven years we outdrafted VAN in three despite having worse draft position (2013, 2014, 2016), they outdrafted us in three but had better draft position in one of those (2017). Twice (2015 and 2018) did they get a better player despite worse draft position. Additionally, since 2013 six players selected by Detroit are already playing in the NHL (5 for VAN) Another three (Svech, Ras, Zadina) are likely to be in the NHL full time, (none for VAN). This is excluding Seider and Podkolzin who will both likely play in the NHL soon enough. Including Sieder and Podkolzin that's 10 NHL level players for Detroit, and 6 for Vancouver since 2013. Both teams will obviously have depth players from these years as well, I just left them out because A) they're depth players, and B) I'm not super familiar with VAN's farm club.

And the hits just keep on comin'!

Excerpt: "...the most infamous player in the Sabres’ 50-year history would do it all over again. Given the chance, he’d willingly accept the pain, the depression, the three-drug cocktail regularly injected into his hip, the losing, the eroding of his skills, the embarrassment of zero goals and – of course – the unbelievable gobs of money. But as he weighs those three years in Buffalo, as long-gone emotions return to bring him down, he pauses. There’s one thing he could have done without. “I guess I would have loved not to catch so much s***,” Leino said, “but it is what it is.”

Why bother? Yzerman just traded for Perlini who's basically the exact same player for a 10th the asking price of Puljujarvi.

Don't agree. Since 2013 Holland and his team drafted the following: 1st line center (Larkin) Two top line wingers (Mantha, Bert) A top four defenseman (Hronek) Several "wait and see" guys with top end potential (Ras, Zadina) Several guys with middle 6 potential (Cholo, McIsaac, VEleno, Berggren, Svech) And a boat load of depth guys. I don't think any other team has drafted as well in that period of time. Particularly given our draft slots in each year. IMO the disreputable state of this team is more likely attributed to the 8 years (or so) before that when we only had about 3 first round picks and whiffed on all of them (Smith, Kindl, Sheahan). Aside from Nyquist and Tatar we basically didn't draft or develop any higher end talent (and no talent at key positions) until we landed Larkin. We suck today, in part, because of the poor drafting of 8 or 10 years ago not the drafting of the last hand full of years which has been quite good.

Joe Hicketts sucks. Did anybody watch that sequence last night there he was knocked off the puck in the defensive zone three times in one shift by the same guy? Literally wasted an entire shift in our zone because our defender couldn't protect the puck and advance it. Anybody who thinks he's better than Daley or Green is delusional. While both those guys are bad, they are at least functional against NHL caliber hockey players.

Yikes, Joe Veleno with a team worst -11 through 10 games. Next highest on the team is Zadina with a -6. Kid's getting CAVED at even strength.

The counter-point to trade AA is that he's an RFA and so he's still under team control. If he has a bad season this year we might be able to lock him down on a reasonable contract for a few years. While there are definitely deficiencies to his game, he's still got the ability to change games and put up big numbers in small minutes. Say you can re-sign him after a bad year at 2-3 years at 4.5-5 million to ride out his RFA years. That's a huge advantage down lineup.

You just blew this case wide open. I use Wikipedia. It feels so good to finally get that off my chest.

Winnipeg. Ottawa wasn't a buyer at the trade deadline.