OldTimeHockey
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mr grieves said:
Isn't adding players where you lacked building on your success from last year?
Kadri and Franson Contract Updates
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Isn't adding players where you lacked building on your success from last year?
mr grieves
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Nik the Trik said:
Well, it's certainly true that giving up third period goals was a problem throughout the series and for much of the season. But it wasn't clear to me whether that was a personnel problem or one in the game plan. I seem to recall the Leafs managing a good number of early leads and sliding into a very defensive posture for some stressful third periods.
Relatedly: some fancy stats people have shown that a lot of players who help generate a lot of shots in all situations were on for a lot fewer than usual when the Leafs were tied or leading this year -- and they conclude Carlyle was having the everyone take their foot off the gas.
Nik the Trik said:
I'd certainly agree that better goaltending will cut down on giving up leads late. But there isn't any more depth down the middle. And the more physical forwards... well, yeah. Though the key there seems to be more talented physical forwards. The team had plenty of physicality. Just not on guys you'd want out protecting a lead. So, there certainly are some improvements.
But the original comment that Nonis made, that I found odd, wasn't that he looked at the last ten minutes, saw it as a culmination of defects in the personnel that were present over the season, and determined to spend the summer fixing them. And so improved the goaltending, added veteran grit, got a proper shutdown center, etc. That'd make some sense.
No, he said he looked back on "how [the Leafs] competed with Boston." Which is a strange thing for a GM to say after spending the summer re-signing healthy scratches, qualifying players whose disappearance from the line-up coincided with some success, losing some speed, limiting his team's ability to put together 3 scoring lines, and heading into camp with half of the best defensive pairing during the series unsigned (and not because of some outrageous $4-5m/year contract demand but because other priorities ate the cap space). I mean was it not the speed, various scoring options, and puck mobility that allowed them compete against Boston?
J
Jalili
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mr grieves said:
I think it was those things, but mostly it was Jake Gardiner in particular successfully doing those things. When they put him in a greater role he was a series changer, and exploited the Bruins defense in the same way that Duncan Keith would later do in the Finals.
The guys they lost did contribute speed and hard work, but I'm not sure how effective or efficient they really were.
Kin
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mr grieves said:
I'm not usually one for saying with certainty what did or didn't happen in the locker room but I feel pretty confident that Carlyle at no point told players to ease up and not try so hard.
And that said...wouldn't that sort of usage be expected? Wouldn't you want your best offensive players to play more when you were behind and not ahead? Jay McClement generates very little offense but I'd prefer him out there when the team is tied or leading.
mr grieves said:
It's not really clear what your criticism is here. It seems you're getting at Nonis for being inconsistent with his statements because he's deviating from what you thought was the proper course of action. But if you look at his decisions this off-season they seem to match up pretty well with what you're talking about even if you disagree with the particulars.
For instance, we've gone round on Grabo before but I find it pretty hard to look at how Nonis handled the centre position this summer and not say that at the very least he thinks that we're in a better position with Bozak/Kadri/Bolland than we were with Grabo/Kadri/Bozak or Grabo/Weiss/Kadri or....any number of other combinations because if he preferred those things, he wouldn't have bought out Grabo. So, yeah, I know you think that his decisions there limited the Leafs' ability to put together three scoring lines but clearly he disagrees. That doesn't make either of you wrong, but it doesn't mean that Nonis thinks differently either.
I mean, let's really look at what the team's done so far using your criteria
Speed: I don't know if Bolland would beat Grabo in a footrace but Bolland's not slow. Clarkson isn't slow. Raymond is fast. If those three guys are on the team, the speed of the forwards is probably better. I don't know if it'll be Trevor Smith or Joe Colborne or whoever at this point who'll take Komarov's place but Komarov wasn't exactly Pavel Bure.
Various Scoring Options: Again, this is a difference of opinion, not strategy. You're right that the issue for the Leafs last year wasn't a lack of physicality so much as it was a lack of physicality amongst the real scorers on the team. Clarkson, regardless of what you want to say about his contract, is a guy who plays physical and can skate with the top 6. He's been pretty good the last two years at finding the back of the net. Raymond can score. Bolland can. This seems like another area where Nonis' moves, at the very least, are designed to keep the team at pace with where they were last year.
Puck mobility: Phaneuf is back, Gardiner is back, Liles is back, O'Byrne has been replaced by Ranger. The only guy on the Leafs defense who isn't good moving the puck is Fraser and I think the only reason Fraser is on the team is because they were unsuccessful in signing Scuderi(and, as you'll recall, we both agreed that the team adding a stay-at-home defenseman should have been a goal of Nonis' this off-season and it was). Even then if Franson signs, and admittedly that's an if at this point, Fraser is the 7th defenseman.
So on the basis of your criteria I think Nonis' statement is pretty consistent so long as you look at it from his point of view. The team is probably just as fast if not faster, there's reason to believe that there's going to be more offensive depth(provided whoever ends up in the #3 centre spot is able to add more offensively there than Grabo did, which isn't saying much) and the team is probably going to be just as good at moving the puck from the defense and he did that while adding veteran grit and improving the goaltending.
I mean, that's my whole point here. The things you talk about as only coming into picture in those last 10 minutes were evident all series. They did go down 3-1, after all. So looking at the series as a whole, as a very competitive series, shouldn't just lead to "We're going to double down on our strengths" but also "We're going to address our weaknesses" and it's pretty clear from the moves Nonis made that he did, or at least thinks he did, maintain or improve those strengths while partially addressing(or at least trying to) also deal with where the team struggled.
Nonis' remarks aren't inconsistent just because you disagree with the relative wisdom of his decisions.
mr grieves
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Nik the Trik said:
Oh, I'm sure they were trying real hard at dumping the puck into the neutral zone and chipping it off the boards and out. Whether sitting on leads, energetically or not, is the best way to win hockey games is what I wonder.
Nik the Trik said:
Except that it's not just player usage. Players who, in the past, have been on for a good number of shots for in both tied and leading situations saw their numbers drop this last season, even accounting for the increased time the Leafs had leads to preserve in 2013. So, the stats seem to back up my impression: Carlyle was telling his players to ease up (offensively) and protect their leads. Maybe that won them a few games they wouldn't have in the past. It definitely looked like something that lost them a few games too.
Nik the Trik said:
It wasn't meant as a criticism, really. More a question, though it certainly assumes what I make of his offseason. I was just curious about the statement that what he took away from the Boston series was how the Leafs competed with the Bruins. I don't think it's very controversial to say that the Leafs competed when the Leafs stopped trying to out-Boston Boston and instead dressed a more skilled line-up, started using their speed and puck-controlling defensemen to come at them in waves. I guess I'm just having difficulty understanding how getting tougher, not quicker, and leaving Franson till now are things you'd do if you were impressed by how the Leafs competed with Boston.
But, on the overall effect of the moves, I don't disagree, you've convinced me: at the level of personnel, maybe he's addressed some shortcomings (skilled toughness, better goaltending, veteran grit) without eating too far into those strengths and (maybe) maintaining them.
Nik the Trik said:
As said earlier, and many times before, those last ten minutes were, to me, the most extreme expression of certain things that happened all season. But I didn't think they were so much problems with the players as with the coach. I thought those late game goals were outcomes you risk when you play too conservatively and rely too heavily on certain players (Phaneuf, notably) to hold leads. Guys get tired turtling and chasing pucks around. It's hard to get a change if you don't enter the other team's zone with possession. Things like that.
On this front, the Simmons's quote from an unnamed "Leaf exec" that, with Bolland, "the Leafs don't lose game 7 in Boston" is troubling.
bustaheims
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Frank E said:
I get the Leafs' position here. This is the 2nd straight off-season where they've been involved in a difficult negotiation with Franson - something I'm sure they'd rather avoid. There's also the threat of arbitration, which Franson would probably go for next summer - and that would likely lead to Franson being awarded a larger contract than the Leafs would like. On top of that, they already have to deal with Kessel and Phaneuf potentially becoming UFAs. They're hoping to ease their workload a little bit, while trying to manage next season's cap as well.
Kin
New member
mr grieves said:
Yeah, again, I think that sort of thing runs so directly into the teeth of traditional hockey wisdom that I would be really surprised if that was a conscious decision on anyone's part.
mr grieves said:
I think at this point I'd probably have to see what you're referring to in order to add anything because I'm not 100% clear on what you're saying here. Is it that players who, in previous years, were good at generating offense got less playing time this year when the team was up or tied? Again, that wouldn't strike me as indicative of anything for three particular reasons
1) Some guys who were good in the past at generating offense were not good at generating offense this year
2) Kadri, who had a very good offensive season, was probably getting some of that ice time
3) McClemment, who again is the guy who seems best suited to play with a lead, was new to the team and sensibly would have gotten a lot of playing time.
So I'm still not really getting what you're saying here. If it's that players who were good at generating offense in years past with a lead were less good at it this year but whose overall level of offensive contributions remained relatively constant like, say, Kessel or Bozak then I suppose I could see how that might indicate something although even there I'd wonder if that weren't a practically reality stemming from having the lead much more often and players not being able to have their foot on the gas constantly.
mr grieves said:
Well, unless there's more to that quote than I know of it seems to me to be more easily read as "I didn't focus on the last 10 minutes, I focused on the series as a whole" which, again, would lead someone to, yes, look at the ways in which Toronto did well but also to look at the areas that hurt them. There is nothing in the language that Nonis is quoted as using that would indicate that he wouldn't address the ways the team fell short. You seem to be inventing addendums of "...and want to compete in exactly the same way" or "and so I've focused my efforts exclusively on beating what is a fairly different Boston team next year" to "I look at the way the team competed"
mr grieves said:
Well, I think there's some truth to it being pretty problematic if you're leaning too heavily on a guy like Phaneuf when he himself has some defensive question marks but other things there seem pretty counter intuitive, like it being somehow more tiring for a team to play conservative hockey than it is for them to be constantly outskating their opponents or the idea in general of relying a ton on particular defensemen being negative(I'd look to examples of the Bruins in particular or Carlyle's cup winning Anaheim teams as examples of how that can work).
Regardless though, I think that to the extent that those personnel problems could be addressed this off-season they were, or they tried to(although it seems to me as though the one thing that the Leafs really need personnel wise is a Chris Pronger in his prime type and none of them were available). As to the coaching aspect of it I'm pretty confident that Carlyle felt that loss pretty good and so to the extent that the outcome could be managed by coaching it's being looked at.
(and, for what it's worth, I'm not really convinced of this. I think Reimer didn't play terrifically, I think it exposed a lot of flaws in the team's defense and, in particular, how a deep team with physical forwards could beat up on the Leafs. Those are personnel issues. The problem with addressing them this off-season is just the ever-present problem of those things only really being able to be addressed by things like an exceptional #1 goalie, a true #1 defenseman and big, fast two-way forwards and none of those things are easily attainable.)
mr grieves
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Nik the Trik said:
I'm referring to a recent hockeyanalysis.com article. Here it is: http://hockeyanalysis.com/2013/09/06/is-success-partly-to-blame-for-dion-phaneufs-and-mikhail-grabovskis-poor-corsi-last-year/
It argues that, in addition to having the lead much more often, the team was playing more conservatively with it. I'm not really sure what to make of the piece. But it seems to confirm something I saw often enough: the team built up leads and played reactive hockey while opponents tried to whittle away at those leads. Or succeeded in taking an ax to them, like Boston.
Nik the Trik said:
Maybe he meant "played" and not "competed," as in "gave Boston a run for their money." I think "competed" was the success they had in that series, so I was wondering what Nonis thought they did that made them competitive. I suppose there were addendums added, though not the ones you're ascribing to me.
Nik the Trik said:
Well, I never said Carlyle was relying on Pronger or Chara or Lindstrom too heavily. I said he was relying on Phaneuf too heavily -- over 25 minutes and he seems to do bad things. And, when you're rolling all your lines while the trailing team is double-shifting their scoring lines, I think we see the team with the lead not looking especially exhausted, despite outskating (or keeping up with) their opponents. But, yes, regardless...
Nik the Trik said:
I wonder where this confidence in Carlyle's introspective nature comes from.
Nik the Trik said:
Sounds like we need a Rask, Chara, and Lucic. And, sure, if the Leafs were the Boston Bruins they probably would've had a better chance of beating them.
mr grieves
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Bullfrog said:
Plus the RFAs: Reimer, Gardiner, Colborne.
I looked at the CapGeek a while back, and figured it was something like $35 or $40m in space, given all the expiring contracts, the buyouts coming off the books, and a $2-7m increase in the cap.
That's a lot of money, but maybe not so much when you need to get a top-6 winger, a top pairing defenseman, 2 second-pairing defensemen, an entire third line, a defensive center/ PK specialist and half a goaltending tandem.
Kin
New member
mr grieves said:
Yeah, I think that this is another case of making improper conclusions from the data(although reading the article it seems like that's as much you as it is them, they phrase it more as Carlyle just being a more defensive coach). That convincingly makes the case that two specific players were used in a more defensive role this year but I don't think that's something any of us would have need confirmed. Extrapolating from those two examples a teamwide strategy as opposed to, as I said, a pretty standard example of players in defensive roles getting more ice time in defensive situations doesn't seem like a very strong stance to take although, again, I'm not even sure that the author is.
mr grieves said:
Yeah, see, that seems like a pretty clear cut case of you reading your own very specific and not very evident meaning into those pretty basic words. To me it reads simply that Nonis isn't focusing on those final 10 minutes but on the series as a whole which is going to lead him to look at not just the successes but also the failures. The idea that he would only look at the things the team did well in a few specific games and not look to fix the problems...I don't know why you'd read that into such a simple sentence.
mr grieves said:
I think we agree largely here. Phaneuf is not ideally suited for that role. My point is just that because Phaneuf has a decent argument for being the team's best defenseman and he's not able to do that it is an issue of personnel and not an easily resolved one. Obviously nothing is a pre-requisite to post-season success and there are exceptions to everything but that Chara/Pronger/Keith kind of minutes eater is as close to a necessity as you get.
I don't think that, absent a guy like that, the solution is to give more crunch time minutes to guys who aren't as good defensively as Phaneuf, even if they are fresher.
mr grieves said:
I just don't think you can get to be a NHL head coach if you're the kind of person who would say "Boy, that was the worst collapse in hockey history...no need to look at it, who's up for a couple of brews?"
mr grieves said:
Well, yeah. I mean, I don't think Nonis should think that the city on the hill is the 2012-2013 Maple Leafs.
Crucialness Key
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What do we think is the Leafs' internal "deadline" for signing Franson? Is it the start of the regular season, 1-2 games before the start of the regular season, or 9 games into the regular season (i.e. he enters the lineup as Rielly sent down)?
bustaheims
Active member
Frank E said:
A 2 year deal would mean he'd be a UFA when it expired. He'd be an RFA at the end of a 1 year deal.
bustaheims
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Peter D. said:
Well, my guess is they're not concerned about that right now and feel that, as they're approaching the trade deadline next season, they'll either be able to get (or already have) Franson signed to an extension, or already have a replacement in the organization ready to take a larger role.
GhostofPotvin29
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Qualifying Fraser making less and less sense.
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