mr grieves said:
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.
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:
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?
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.