OffThePost.org

This was mostly mental. Price absolutely got in their heads. Marner looked like a deer in headlights in Game 7. You could see it coming. They sabotaged their own chances.

I've really never seen anything like it. The Leafs absolutely should've won and they just couldn't do it. The Habs, meanwhile, were too stubborn to admit defeat.

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That Matthews post rings loud. Hyman couldn't get the damn puck over Price's pad. How many chances did he have in close?

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Thanks Chuck, E.L. and Harmy!

Some of this, I'll begrudgingly admit, was by design:

Bergevin built around Price and a big, slow defence that could collapse in front of him. It worked.

Dubas built a top heavy team. Tavares and Muzzin got hurt and they couldn't adjust.

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Tavares and Muzzin are absolutely huge pieces to lose.

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Thanks Chuck, E.L. and Harmy!

Mariner looks completely lost. He should just quit talking all together. As for pig face boy? He should go back to rollerblades.

Marner collapsed last night. Literally and figuratively. He fell down a few times without anyone touching him from what I remember.

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Thanks Chuck, E.L. and Harmy!

Tavares may not have been on the ice for the majority of these playoffs, but he hasn't won a round in 3 years with his chosen team.
His former team, that was going to be totally screwed when he left according to everyone on the planet, has won 5 rounds so far in those same 3 years. So I beg to differ on that half of your sentence.

And if anyone wants to argue that a team losing its Captain for the playoffs is going to be a bit screwed, the Isles have won a round without Lee and are tied in Round 2 now.

My word of the day- Schaedenfraude.

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Posting your political views on social media is like sticking your head up your ass & whispering: You're just as likely to change someone's mind, and you'll always come out looking like a shithead.

I think it's telling that the two top heavy teams, regardless of talent, are out of the playoffs. As hard as it will be to do, they may have no choice but to break up the band for better depth.

And......



The Ghosts may be Rising from their Slumber....

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What would Mad Max be like with EVs?

I didn't realize how much better they are without him.

I sure hope this doesn't result in good people losing their jobs, because this particular failure might hit close to home for all of us. Nobody here wants that.

That said...the Leafs really surprised and disappointed me this year. After driving the bus with analytics they went full VETERAN PRESENCE this offseason. And frankly I think that may have made the team too slow and ultimately punchless when it mattered most. Guys like Thornton and Simmonds certainly brought the toughness and leadership, but they were nowhere to be found on the scoresheet in this series. Spezza continues to be a brilliant signing, but the rest of those guys? Hmmmmm...

So was that Dubas, or are there still people in the room screaming traditionalist takes? Something seems very amiss behind the scenes.

Anyway, Bergevin went into this looking like he was in huge trouble and now looks like someone fully vindicated. Don't know how he does it but that guy just has multiple lives. I cannot believe that signing Corey Fucking Perry turned out to be such a coup.

The vets thing is fascinating, because Perry, Staal and Spezza were all big players in the series. Joe wasn't and Simmonds tired as the series went on. I think it's a good strategy to add these guys as depth, but the Leafs needed someone to bust through and it wasn't them.

I thought Foligno was a big swing and a miss. Cost them a 1st. All he did was fight Perry after the JT injury.

I hope for their sake the Leafs realize they were a JT/Muzzin away from winning, but they need to figure out how to not be so top heavy. The fill-in guys weren't enough.

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They need some young, cheap hits from their drafts.

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Thanks Chuck, E.L. and Harmy!

There might be something to Bergevin's choice to go with vets who were SC winners vs great players who never did it. You want the right kind of experience to calm the team's nerves.

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What would Mad Max be like with EVs?

Corey frickin Perry is a really good hockey player.

The anti-stats rubes are out in full force critiquing the Leafs. That's not what happened here. Arguably the most underrated, underappreciated player from an analytical point of view is none other than Phil Danault, who is literally an elite 5v5 centre. His body of work showed he was capable of shutting down Matthews. With Tavares out and not much depth after that, the top-heavy Leafs suddenly didn't matchup well. But if you only eye tested it or looked at goals, you'd think Danault was a layup against the Rocket Richard champ.

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The narrative on the Leafs is fucking ridiculous. If anything, Dubas's hard shift AWAY from analytics did more harm than anything else.

Danault is an analytics darling, despite not-great production. I agree he's about as good a defensive center as you will ever find in hockey. He has the speed and talent to shut down virtually anyone, and he most certainly did so in this series.

I'm still curious as to what prompted this hard shift in the offseason. I really think the Leafs made themselves a little too slow, which is saying something because the Habs are technically a REALLY slow team, yet they sure didn't look like it.