Marlies Talk 14/15 | aka What's Nylander up to?

[Kin]

Nylander looks bored out there; like he's playing with his nephews or something. Damn he's good.

I'm guessing he's going to make it very hard for the team to keep him in the AHL next year.

 

[Highlander]

Leipsic looked very good as well and Frattin continues to find his Mojo.  Brown is very impressive as well.  Wonder how many Marlies are going to make it to the bigs next year?

 

[GhostofPotvin29]

http://video.mapleleafs.nhl.com/videocenter/console?id=803132&catid=802

Highlights of the game, Brown and Nylander made some real pretty plays.

Nylander looks bored out there; like he's playing with his nephews or something. Damn he's good.

That shot was pretty fantastic considering he did not look really "set" at all into a shooting position.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

Connor Brown has the AHL rookie scoring lead, Leipsic is 4th. If you went by PPG Nylander would be 4th. Pretty impressive to have 3 of the 5 top scoring rookies.

Big change too from when the team was mostly led by veterans like Zigomanis, Aucoin, Brennan, and Hamilton.

 

[herman]

Since when has Nylander been referred to as "Snizzbone".  What is a Snizzbone anyway?

Seriously, stupid and illogical nicknames are the absolute worst.

Snizzbone is William Nylander's Twitter handle.

Missed the link to the whole interview with Dubas, but here's more than just the excerpts I posted earlier in the thread.  For example, Dubas talks about how they plan to use the ECHL team:

--snip--

http://kylethereporter.com/2015/04/02/kyle-dubas-leafs-taking-a-baseball-approach-to-expanding-their-minor-league-system/

I kind of love this guy.

 

[L K]

Nylander looks bored out there; like he's playing with his nephews or something. Damn he's good.

I'm guessing he's going to make it very hard for the team to keep him in the AHL next year.

24 points in 31 games  while dealing with the new dimensions of North American hockey and playing in a league that emphasizes more physicality than skill on some nights.  He's also been PPG over his last 15 games. 

Pretty hard to argue against that kind of production not being ready for the NHL.  I do understand the notion of allowing development to take its course and that there is more to the game than just offensive production but it's not like he's an atrocious defensive player.  It's also a pretty reasonable time to get a guy on the NHL roster next year when it's going to be a pretty clear development period and not so much a 'win at all costs' kind of year.

 

[GhostofPotvin29]

Nylander looks bored out there; like he's playing with his nephews or something. Damn he's good.

I'm guessing he's going to make it very hard for the team to keep him in the AHL next year.

24 points in 31 games  while dealing with the new dimensions of North American hockey and playing in a league that emphasizes more physicality than skill on some nights.  He's also been PPG over his last 15 games. 

Pretty hard to argue against that kind of production not being ready for the NHL.  I do understand the notion of allowing development to take its course and that there is more to the game than just offensive production but it's not like he's an atrocious defensive player.  It's also a pretty reasonable time to get a guy on the NHL roster next year when it's going to be a pretty clear development period and not so much a 'win at all costs' kind of year.

I think I'd still rather keep him in the AHL for a year.  That would also continue to push his contract right?

 

[CarltonTheBear]

24 points in 31 games  while dealing with the new dimensions of North American hockey and playing in a league that emphasizes more physicality than skill on some nights.  He's also been PPG over his last 15 games. 

Pretty hard to argue against that kind of production not being ready for the NHL.  I do understand the notion of allowing development to take its course and that there is more to the game than just offensive production but it's not like he's an atrocious defensive player.  It's also a pretty reasonable time to get a guy on the NHL roster next year when it's going to be a pretty clear development period and not so much a 'win at all costs' kind of year.

If you take out his first 6 games where he was adjusting to a new team and league midseason, something few players ever really do, and he's had 22 points in 25 games. That's a .88 point-per-game pace. That's very good. With those games he's at .77, hopefully he has a good finish and he can make that number hit .80 for the season.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

I think I'd still rather keep him in the AHL for a year.  That would also continue to push his contract right?

Yeah, his contract can still slide for 1 more season. I've said this before, but I hope the plan is to have him be the Marlies 1C next season, at least to start. Even if he's not a winger in the NHL it would be a good experience for him to have. If he's absolutely dominating then consider bringing him up.

 

[Highlander]

Hey Herman thanks for the update on Snizzbone, pretty bizzare handle but good it is self named.

 

[GhostofPotvin29]

I think I'd still rather keep him in the AHL for a year.  That would also continue to push his contract right?

Yeah, his contract can still slide for 1 more season. I've said this before, but I hope the plan is to have him be the Marlies 1C next season, at least to start. Even if he's not a winger in the NHL it would be a good experience for him to have. If he's absolutely dominating then consider bringing him up.

That would make sense.  If Leafs aren't competitive there's not really any reason to have his contract come up earlier.  Get the most value out of it at it's lowest as you can.  I can't imagine it hurting him in any way.

 

[L K]

I think I'd still rather keep him in the AHL for a year.  That would also continue to push his contract right?

Yeah, his contract can still slide for 1 more season. I've said this before, but I hope the plan is to have him be the Marlies 1C next season, at least to start. Even if he's not a winger in the NHL it would be a good experience for him to have. If he's absolutely dominating then consider bringing him up.

Ok.  Fair enough on that point.  If the intention was to ease him into the North American game this year on the wing and play him at center next year, I agree.  He should play in the AHL to start if he is going to develop as a center.  If they however feel like he is going to be a winger for the team down the road I don't see the point of him playing in the AHL.

 

[Highlander]

I agree with LK on his last post.  Centre one more year in AHL, wing with the Loafs

 

[Crucialness Key]

I think I'd still rather keep him in the AHL for a year.  That would also continue to push his contract right?

Yeah, his contract can still slide for 1 more season. I've said this before, but I hope the plan is to have him be the Marlies 1C next season, at least to start. Even if he's not a winger in the NHL it would be a good experience for him to have. If he's absolutely dominating then consider bringing him up.

That would make sense.  If Leafs aren't competitive there's not really any reason to have his contract come up earlier.  Get the most value out of it at it's lowest as you can.  I can't imagine it hurting him in any way.

But then we'd have to wait like 1 whole year longer to see Nylander get his 1,000th point as a Leaf  :-(

 

[GhostofPotvin29]

Rinat Valiev's season is done in Kootenay and he'll be joining the Marlies.

[tweet]585861220487602178[/tweet]

 

[TML fan]

I think I'd still rather keep him in the AHL for a year.  That would also continue to push his contract right?

Yeah, his contract can still slide for 1 more season. I've said this before, but I hope the plan is to have him be the Marlies 1C next season, at least to start. Even if he's not a winger in the NHL it would be a good experience for him to have. If he's absolutely dominating then consider bringing him up.

Ok.  Fair enough on that point.  If the intention was to ease him into the North American game this year on the wing and play him at center next year, I agree.  He should play in the AHL to start if he is going to develop as a center.  If they however feel like he is going to be a winger for the team down the road I don't see the point of him playing in the AHL.

I'm assuming the point would be to keep him on his ELC longer?

 

[Kin]

Pretty hard to argue against that kind of production not being ready for the NHL.  I do understand the notion of allowing development to take its course and that there is more to the game than just offensive production but it's not like he's an atrocious defensive player.  It's also a pretty reasonable time to get a guy on the NHL roster next year when it's going to be a pretty clear development period and not so much a 'win at all costs' kind of year.

Well, there's another consideration. We can talk about a team tanking all we want but I think what we've seen from Buffalo this year and also from Philadelphia in the NBA is that if you're really tanking, like not even pretending that the playoffs are your goal, you kind of have to assemble a roster that you're more or less willing to totally write off. We saw what happened this year with the Leafs once they started disassembling the team, if Nylander is the best offensive player in camp next year(which he very well could be) and he gets sent down that sends a pretty clear message to the rest of the team.

So I'm ok with Nylander being sent down in that situation but if they do it I think it raises the very real question of whether or not they should deal Rielly as opposed to asking him to give a damn about something the organization clearly doesn't for two or even three years.

 

[rdowdall]

Pretty hard to argue against that kind of production not being ready for the NHL.  I do understand the notion of allowing development to take its course and that there is more to the game than just offensive production but it's not like he's an atrocious defensive player.  It's also a pretty reasonable time to get a guy on the NHL roster next year when it's going to be a pretty clear development period and not so much a 'win at all costs' kind of year.

Well, there's another consideration. We can talk about a team tanking all we want but I think what we've seen from Buffalo this year and also from Philadelphia in the NBA is that if you're really tanking, like not even pretending that the playoffs are your goal, you kind of have to assemble a roster that you're more or less willing to totally write off. We saw what happened this year with the Leafs once they started disassembling the team, if Nylander is the best offensive player in camp next year(which he very well could be) and he gets sent down that sends a pretty clear message to the rest of the team.

So I'm ok with Nylander being sent down in that situation but if they do it I think it raises the very real question of whether or not they should deal Rielly as opposed to asking him to give a damn about something the organization clearly doesn't for two or even three years.

If Nylander is the best offensive player at camp next year (which I agree is a possibility) then I don't think having him on the big club is really going to effect the tank drastically.  Plus the bottom three spots are a lottery, so there is even less incentive to be Buffalo bad next year.

 

[Kin]

If Nylander is the best offensive player at camp next year (which I agree is a possibility) then I don't think having him on the big club is really going to effect the tank drastically.

I don't think Nylander's presence on the team will affect "the tank" much but if Nylander is the best offensive player in camp next year and he gets sent down then there's really no getting around the message that sends to the rest of the team.

 

[GhostofPotvin29]

I don't think Nylander performing well in camp and being sent down has to send any sort of message beyond "Training Camp results are often meaningless."  Kadri performed very well offensively and was sent back down.  Countless players perform very well and disappear every training camp.  He could light it up offensively but be deficient in the rest of his game.