WordsOfWisdom

Kessel seems to have a short shelf life wherever he goes. Boston couldn't stand him. Toronto couldn't stand him. Now Pittsburgh can't stand him. One word: TOXIC.

I finished 3rd.

How come I didn't get any points for St. Louis reaching the finals??? I had the correct team from the West and didn't earn any points in my bracket for it.

I looked at a list of the top 25 worst trades in Leafs history and I truly believe the Tuukka Rask trade has to be #1 because the list doesn't factor in how the traded player came back to harm the Leafs -- it only looks at their career performance in general. Rask has wiped out the Leafs THREE TIMES now in recent playoff memory. His performance has hurt the Leafs more than Scott Niedermayer, Lindros, or any other missed opportunity draft pick or traded star ever did to Toronto. It would be the equivalent of the Philadelphia Flyers trading draft pick Sidney Crosby to Pittsburgh and then being eliminated in the playoffs every year by the Penguins while Crosby scored hat tricks every game and won the Conn Smythe award.

The question is how. I don't see the Leafs adding anything to their roster this off-season. There's no cap room to add players. I only see deletions coming. I see key players leaving for bigger contracts elsewhere, and the holes being filled by prospects/draft picks. It's sort of like a "core reset" if you will. The Leafs tried to win with the core group that they have had for the past three years. It hasn't worked. That usually means the core gets changed in some dramatic way before the team is ready to try again (usually three years down the road). The Leafs are entering the "drop-off phase" of their rebuild. The early peak that didn't quite peak high enough followed by the "trough of tinkering" that teams like the Sharks and Blues have gone through in recent years to try and get the right mix of players.

Well, on one hand, the Leafs can say they pushed the (most likely) Stanley Cup champs to seven games before losing..... which would suggest that the Leafs were as close as you could get to winning a Cup (while still going out in the first round of course). On the other hand, the Leafs collapsed for the third time, losing a commanding 3-2 series lead before another game 7 meltdown (soft goal by Andersen and another brain fart by Gardiner being the difference in the deciding game). The problem the Leafs face is that this really was their year. This was the season they could have won it all (for real). This was their last best chance. It could have been them facing the winner of the Sharks/Blues series. It truly is a lost opportunity. Unfortunately, the price for failure now is quite possibly Marner, Gardiner, and Kapanen, with no replacements coming. A hard lesson to learn in a ruthless cap era. When you have all the pieces in place, you get ONE, maybe TWO chances, to get it right. After that, the core of your team is dismantled. The Leafs now face the familiar prospect of having too much money tied up in too few players -- players who can't possibly exceed expectations. You can't win that way. You need to have some "bargains" on your roster in a cap world. If everyone is getting paid what they're worth then you can't possibly have a Cup-calibre team that stays under the cap. The Leafs need to find and develop the next Marner, the next Gardiner, and the next Kapanen, and hopefully soon.

I always feel like I'm receiving an apology when I get a notification about this message thread.

You're the best! That confirms what I suspected! Here is a screen capture of the video (since YT videos have a way of disappearing):

No doubt lol.

I agree with you. It's insane. However, I'm more interested in THIS ONE PARTICULAR INCIDENT because it's my belief that it's a result of the NHL botching a rule change that came into effect in 2005-06 after the lockout. So because the NHL didn't think it through when they moved the blue lines, we now have offsides occurring during line changes with players who aren't involved in the play. It's a glitch in the game. A bug that needs fixing. My two cents (as usual).

I don't know if you were high, tired, completely disinterested, or all of the above when you wrote that lol.

This is my pet peeve of the past 24 hours. Does anyone have a photo of an NHL rink showing the player benches and blue lines prior to the year 2004? Apparently Google doesn't. If this same play had occurred prior to 2004, then there's no way the player could have been offside by standing next to the player's bench. The NHL f__ked up here on this one. So in the absence of any photographic evidence whatsoever, I'm just going to say that the entire player's bench was in center ice and that no portion of the player's bench was in the offensive/defensive zone prior to the rule change involving the location of the blue lines.

No prob! I'm trying to find a picture showing the player benches and the blue lines before and after the rule change. Can't find one anywhere. So frustrating! My hypothesis is that the player benches were 100% within the center ice area. So this type of offside only became possible when the NHL moved the blue lines in 2005-06.

I don't dispute that. The replay clearly shows it. All I'm saying is, you couldn't put yourself offside on a line change ten years ago because the blue lines weren't there. Unless I'm mistaken, the benches were entirely within the center ice area. So due to an NHL rule change to increase the size of the zones, this unusual situation can occur where a player who isn't active on the ice is now able to be offside. To me, I think once he reaches the bench (close enough that his substitute can come on) then he shouldn't be considered part of any offside. He isn't an active player on the ice. Him being AT the player's bench about to go off should be considered as good as him sitting ON the bench. My two cents.

LOL. Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not questioning what the current rule is. My point is that the current rule should be changed.

I'd like to but they're no longer playing! Honestly, if you had to grade the performance of the team... what grade do you give to this season/playoff? In my opinion, they backed into a playoff spot after a horrendous finish to the regular season, and they blew a 3-2 series lead (collapse) against Boston. They didn't accomplish what was a clear mission for this season: a deep playoff run. 50% of the teams in the NHL make the playoffs, so if the best you can do is go out in the first round every year, then your season is basically a 50% score out of 100.

Out of curiosity, WHY does the NHL call that play offside? It's my understanding that a player is no longer in play once he reaches the bench (regardless of whether or not he has left the ice yet). There is a "10 foot rule" or whatever you want to call it for line changes. The player doesn't have to be off completely before the next player can come on. So why (in the interests of keeping the flow of the game) would the NHL call an offside on a player who isn't there? The player at the bench is like a ghost: he doesn't exist. Also keep in mind that this is only an issue because the NHL moved the blue lines out several years ago, thereby allowing this to happen.

Even if the NHL had 30 teams in Canada and 1 team in the US, the Canadian teams would find a way to lose lol. My quick retrospective on the Canadian teams: Toronto: Just happy to be in the playoffs. Salary cap will rip team apart this off-season. Montreal: Is this really the team with the most Stanley Cups in history or did someone make that up? Calgary: They're moving in the right direction finally after many years of being a lost franchise. Edmonton: Neutral isn't a direction. The Oilers have mastered the art of achieving nothing with #1 draft picks. Ottawa: A proper rebuild for a franchise that had a decade-long run of success previously. Winnipeg: Just happy to be in the league. The one Canadian team that will never win a Cup. Vancouver: In need of a proper rebuild. The Canucks are in no danger of winning anything in the next 10 years.

You're back!!!

So you feel that Leafs fans are being unreasonable in wanting to see a winning team? If the Boston Bruins went 10 years of missing the playoffs, fans in Boston would find a new sport to follow. The arena would be empty. I guess it's a different story if you're a younger hockey fan, since younger fans haven't been following the team for as long. Also, the presence of the salary cap means that patience is no longer possible. Every team has to win within the contract window of their core group of players.... or they never will. You can't acquire the players once they reach peak value any more without losing something else. You have to draft them, sign them to long term contracts while they have no value, and HOPE they become star players so that you can win a few Cups before their next contract comes due and the team gets torn apart. Once the player has value, you can't re-sign them any more. In a sport like MLB (with a luxury tax), the Leafs could retain their entire core group of players and add the missing pieces around it, gradually building it into a champion. That's how it should be in my opinion. In the NHL however, the Leafs now face the prospect of losing Mitch Marner this off-season (who will go straight to a team within the division like Detroit or Buffalo) and that will diminish the Leafs, bolster the opposition, and make a playoff miss in 2020 a very real possibility. I'm forecasting that the Leafs will regress to being a 90 point team and will miss the playoffs due to the loss of several key players this off-season. They blew their chance at a Cup this year. I'm merely asking the question. I never applied for the job, so you can't say I ever got turned down! Don't mind me. The usual end of season frustration. Carolina can win another Cup and celebrate in their parking lot. It'll be great.

I realize that. And they were surrounded by Marleau (39), Muzzin (30), Hainsey (38), Gardiner (28), Kadri (28), Tavares (28), etc........ Age is NOT the problem here! Yes. The clock never stops ticking. You don't get to exchange old players with new ones and get a reset on the clock. That's not how it works. It's still 20 years since this franchise went beyond the first round and over 50 years since its last Cup win. There is no more patience being granted by Toronto fans. It's deliver results now or face the torches and pitchforks. What direction is neutral exactly? The team hasn't moved anywhere in three years. They lost to Washington, lost to Boston, and just lost to Boston again... all in the first round. They finished 3rd in the division with 100 points, good for 7th overall in the NHL, and then blew a 3-2 series lead. If this team actually DID listen to me, they would get some decent results for a change.

It looks like he just wears the frames but no glasses. It's like that guy in the movie Wolf of Wall Street. He's going for the "nerd look" but doesn't actually need glasses.

He may/may not fire him this off-season, but I think Babcock needs to be put on the hot seat. He had a LOT of years in Detroit of early playoff exits after that Detroit team slowly got picked apart. That team hasn't won since ~2008? The jury is out on whether or not Babcock can coach a team to a Stanley Cup or whether it was Detroit's cast of star players that got them there in spite of Babcock.

But these issues were addressed with the acquisitions of Hainsey, Marleau, Tavares, Muzzin, etc.... The Leafs went out and specifically acquired guys who had that experience. How long did it take Crosby & Co. to win their first Stanley Cup in Pittsburgh? How about Toews, Kane and Co. in Chicago? You don't have to be age 30 to be good enough to win. The best players in the league are young now. Ovechkin was scoring 50 goals from day 1 in the NHL. Crosby had 120 points in his first or second season. The path of progression is such that Marner, Matthews, Rielly, etc... are peaking now. This team needs a breakthrough playoff run. I don't even care if they win the Cup. Just go deep. Get to a Cup final. Get to a conference final. Make an extended playoff run and whatever happens happens. This team hasn't won a playoff round in 20 years! Patience is gone.

That may be true, but the Leafs aren't breaking through the first round like other lower seeded teams (Columbus, Carolina, Colorado, Dallas, etc.....) do on an annual basis and there needs to be something done about it. I believe the Leafs are not being coached to the same level that those other teams are. Those other teams are getting the most out of their group of players. The Leafs by all accounts, aren't. It's not a lack of playoff experience any more. It's not about age. It's about Babcock not playing his star players enough. He has all the big guns on this roster and simply chooses not to deploy them.