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If I were to put myself in Marner's shoes, what I'd want is transparency from the team and assurance that the media narrative can be ignored. i.e. Treliving should be (and likely is) talking to other GMs to establish the reality of any trade value. He should make sure Marner is aware of this in...

For those after dramatic change, Marner's contract status will be tantalising. Particularly after signing bonuses get paid on July 1, and the big cap hit comes along with only $775k of actual salary. Just that one pesky obstacle of his NMC preventing you from transforming him into whatever piece...

Can't be said enough. Decided the series. Outscored 18-12 overall and 6-1 of that was on the PP. A team this offensively talented cannot have a PP this bad.

I haven't been paying a whole lot of attention to Sandin in Washington. The stats say 1 assist in 11 games. Is there something more to this which says we didn't get fair value?

Personally, I think the Leafs (whether by luck or design) are better off with this 4 year deal. I was hoping for 5, expecting 3. Watching Tavares the last couple of years (he was 27 when he signed here, and is 32 now) makes me suspect that age around the end of this deal, Matthews will be...

If I were Matthews agent, I would absolutely be setting a balance of expectations that Matthews on the UFA market at 30 is going to see a big 7 year payday. I think I'm safely agreeing Nik's point when I say I struggle to imagine all 32 NHL GMs with the discipline to not hand out crazy UFA...

I think the flaw in your estimates above may be the expectation that Matthews salary goes down on the 8 year deal. If he's looking at the Tavares deal, he could be expecting an offer more in the 15-16+ (depending on cap) even at 30 years... it just might mean moving teams (even if that means 7...

Nice line of speculation there to get from he wanted more autonomy to dereliction of duty, and then have zero sympathy for the scenario you created. There's a big difference between it being a last minute sticking point and it being raised for the first time. As far as we know, this has been a...

We are filling gaps in what we know with assumptions. When a negotiation blows up like this, fair to guess there was some missed expectations... but i don't think we know enough to extrapolate that to lack of forthrightness and dishonesty on one side. Expectation management is a two way street...

With the benefit of hindsight, it wasn't a black & white decision. Dubas would hardly have been the first sports exec to get extended and then fired, and this mess probably tells us something about why we see those situations. The opportunity for the board, Shanahan et al in that moment was to...

So, I've been wrestling with this point in my head since the firing. The place I keep getting stuck is the idea that the contract demands changed in ways that were wildly surprising after months of negotiation to the point where Shanahan walks away from Dubas. For the past year the narrative...

Do people think the idea of the board getting involved in Hockey Operations is a straw man? I'm old enough to remember Ballard, so I'm an easy mark for that kind of fear mongering. I don't generally pay attention to who is (or in this case isn't) sitting in the MLSE CEO chair. The conclusion is...

My bad, was looking at his regular season +/-... regardless, as long as he's getting points and chances, I'm probably okay with Nylander. Fix the zone exits and when the puck gets to him he'll outscore his defensive shortcomings.

So far Nylander has 7 points in 7 playoff games and is a +10. He was also getting plenty of chances through game 1. If Florida continues to give him that much room he's going to have a big series.

Can you expand on this for me please? I am struggling to understand what action Dubas can take which would impact the series. Inputs vs. outputs, Dubas has - for better or worse - finished his work. He's now little more than a high profile fan.

https://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/team_results.php?tid=38&sid=2022 Last 20 games: 15-3-2

With the exception of 2017, the Leafs of recent times have pretty consistently had at least one player from the 3rd round or below make the NHL. Not sure how that compares to other teams, but it at least says the pick is far from worthless. This year they've had Abbruzzese, Hollowell, Kral...

By neither extending Dubas or moving him on, the message is pretty clear: playoff success in 2023 or you're out. Whether that's "beat the Lightning" or "Deep run", it's not really surprising that he's shortened the horizon and focused everything on this year. All of which to say, if they have...

The NHL playoffs haven?t worked that way for 10 years. The current format offers no insight into how the team would fare outside of the division. There are a bunch of ways to try and answer that question. If you?re not comfortable with the regular season?s rankings, the NHL does try to account...

Best reason to extend him right now may be exactly that. If Dubas feels it's win in the first round or get fired, there's an incentive to do something dramatic and short sighted. Otherwise, while optimistic about this particular iteration of the Leafs, I can't see a rush to commit.