Everything Else

You Share The Same Fate As The People You Hate – ’18-’19 Team Previews: Toronto Maple Leafs

By Matt McClure 2114 0

But how does this affect the Leafs?

Any time literally anything in hockey, or sports in general happens, the Canadian Hockey Media and 95% of Canadian hockey fans pen either short or longform thoughts on this exact hypothetical. Maple Leafs fans are the most populous group in the sport, and they are also the most vocal and the most incapable of dealing with other human beings on any real level. They have made a ball hockey playing Baby Huey, a face painted cigarette smoking sexist, and an actual psychopath shrieking in front of his action figures in his basement “experts” via social media. Those that don’t even fall into those extremes are far more concerned with salary cap ramifications than the realities of actually winning a championship because doing so would completely strip them of their narcissistic, cloyingly self-deprecating, head-up-their-own-ass fandom. The latter tendency has led them to form a cult around a Rivers Cuomo looking ass motherfucker of a GM, whose sexual politics might actually be worse that Rivers’ in simply brushing aside a sexual assault scandal when he was in charge of a junior team. But hey, he hired a woman and bloggers for the front office, and a Candian junior team needs to have a bus accident to avoid having a sexual assault scandal of one form or another, so Kyle Dubas is a beloved figure kind of by default. It’s a goddamn shame that the on-ice product will probably be some of the most watchable hockey in the league, because all of the bullshit around this team is enough to gag anyone whose face isn’t painted blue and white.

’17-’18: 49W-26L-7OT 105PTS 277GF 232GA 24.9%PP 81.4%PK 49.82%CF 9.01%SH .9287SV%

 

Forwards: Might as well switch up the format and get right to it here, because this was already one of the more stacked groups in the league, and it only got moreso by adding the biggest free agent since the last lockout in erstwhile Islanders captain and hometown boy John Tavares. But while the crowing masses already planning the parade down Yonge St. still love to squawk about Dubas’ being a BRAIN GEANIOUS, he still managed to throw the first ever maximum salary in the form of almost entirely lump sum signing bonuses at Tavares even when it probably wouldn’t have taken that much arm twisting to get him to want to play in his home town with the current roster. That’s not to say it’s not a brilliant contract, as the Leafs are one of maybe like 3 teams in the league that can possibly afford that much out of pocket and it’s tremendous leverage considering that money up front is always preferable for athletic contracts, but there’s no need to pretend like this is some small market coup as the masses did. The resultant flip side of that coin is that dynamic winger William Nylander is still an unsigned restricted free agent, and because most hockey fans are stupid and don’t realize that good players deserve to get paid, the line will likely be that he needs to take less money to keep this grouping together. Nylander still hasn’t reported to camp but he probably will, because nothing remotely interesting happens in these scenarios with the NHL’s boring ass GM’s. But even aside from Nylander, the Leafs have Auston Matthews to essentially be a co #1 center along with Tavares, which leaves the ever cantankerous and productive Nazem Kadri to take over the third/checking line assignment, where he will simply devour bums all season long. Mitch Marner‘s deft play making on the wing will make this top 6 arguably the best in the NHL, but there are still concerns here. For as much as everyone liked to talk shit, and deservedly so about Tyler Bozak‘s role in the Tronna offensive attack, he and the departed James Van Riemsdyk took a combined 98 points with them out the door to the Blues and Flyers respectively. John Tavares’ career high in point output is 86. So while this offense is certainly more dynamic, it might be running in place in terms of actual output, and preventing goals might be the bigger issue.

Defense: Now it gets fun. While Morgan Rielly (spell your name right dickhead) and Jake Gardiner are fine second pairing guys who can do a bit of everything alright, they’re not true #1 defensemen by any stretch of the imagination. Ron Hainsey is now 38 years old and will be asked to play more top 4 minutes. Nikita Zaitsev  needs to take a leap beyond being a bum slaying third pairing puck mover, but despite him being only in his third year in the league, he’ll be 27 next month, so at this point he kind of is what he is. Connor Carrick and Travis Dermott don’t really do anything for anyone, so compared to a lot of other groupings even in this division, the Leafs blue line is found wanting.

Goaltending: And here it is, the great undoing. Freddy Andersen probably doesn’t deserve this level of preemptive blame or responsibility, but deserve’s got nothing to do with it. Last year Andersen was completely serviceably average with a .918 overall and a .921 at evens, and proceeded to implode in the playoffs with an .896 in the Leafs’ 7 games of the first round. It’s not the first time Freddy has shat himself in the post-season, as a lifetime ago he sported a .901 in a 7 game Western Conference Final loss to the locals in red and black. “Frederik Andersen” is simply Dutch for “Evgeni Nabakov”- just good enough to break his team’s heart. He’ll be backed up at least to begin with by LOCAL GUY Garrett Sparks, whose 17 games of NHL experience came three years ago when the Leafs were willfully in the toilet trying (and succeeding) to tank for Auston Matthews.

Outlook: It’s a goddamn shame that everything else about this team sucks shit and is wildly irritating, because the process by which this team has been built has been as textbook as anyone could ask for in the modern NHL, and their forward grouping will be healthy if electric. But for all the bouquets thrown his way, Mike Babcock still has his blind spots and will find a way to get tomato cans into the lineup and coach conservatively despite having a trapeze troupe up front. But that may end up serving the team well given the state of things on the back end and in net, which will likely ultimately lead them to a second round out at the latest as other, more balanced teams within their division, specifically Tampa, will find ways to tear through the gaping holes on that blue line.

Previous Team Previews

Detroit Red Wings

Buffalo Sabres

Boston Bruins

Florida Panthers

Montreal Canadiens

Ottawa Senators

Tampa Bay Lightning

Everything Else

You Get What Anyone Gets: Saying Goodbye To The Toronto Maple Leafs (Thank God)

By Sam Fels 3330 0

I woke up this morning slightly surprised that the Earth hadn’t been thrown slightly off its axis, or the weather patterns changed, or some other global-plus shift, by the entire Toronto area sinking into the core of the Earth at some point last night. And I’m sure the greater Toronto population was even more surprised the world kept spinning despite their demands that it stop to observe the collapse of the Leafs.

What shouldn’t have been surprising is how any of it went down. This is how it was going to be, and the more I think about it given how much the world’s troll Boston sports is, they gave us Barf-Fucking-Stool after all, I become more and more confident that the Bruins did this on purpose. They could have wrapped this up in five. They could have blown the Leafs out in the 1st period of Game 7. But knowing they could score at will against the Leafs defense and especially Freddie Andersen in a Game 7, they probably thought it would most entertaining to do it this way. They even teased it by going down 4-1 in Game 5 and nearly coming back. That’s storytelling at its best, folks.

I never really bought into the whole East Coast bias thing fully, because I figured if it was your job you’d stay up to watch games on the West coast. After all, where the fuck do sportswriters have to be before 10am? But clearly they never did, because the way the entire Leafs Nation tried to sell themselves, and then did, on Freddie Andersen quite frankly wreaks of a cult that should be put on every watchlist by every government in the world. It’s not like there’s a small sample size on this. He’d basically spit it in every playoff series he’d played, including Game 7 meltdowns in ’15 and ’16. And yet there they were on whoever the fuck sponsors whatever the fuck the HNIC pregame show is called telling us everything was right in the world because Andersen was now playing four inches closer to the crease or something. If you watched closely enough you could see Kelly Hrudey’s brain spilling out of his ear while Elliote Friedman wondered what he’d done in a previous life to be chained to this desk of jackasses and nincompoops.

Not that Andersen got any help. Jake Gardiner has always been “a guy,” and if he wasn’t covered by the biggest media group in the league every night you wouldn’t be able to tell him apart from the guy in line in front of you at 7-11. Except that guy would probably stand a better chance of remaining in front of you. Gardiner’s game last night was surrealist performance art to a level that even Dali looked upon it and remarked, “Good God what the fuck is that?” Shockingly, Roman Polak couldn’t clean up the mess either. Is now a good time to mention that Mike Babcock hasn’t won a playoff series in five years? And that one came against the Ducks in a Game 7, so does that even count? No, it doesn’t. But hey, give him miles the best roster in either league or international play and there’s at least a decent chance he won’t fuck up royally while boring the ever loving shit out of you.

But in the end, this is really what Leafs fans and media want. You can’t find a group that desires more to be both the pre-2000 Yankees and Red Sox. They demand you pay attention to them at all times, while also feeling sorry for them. They must have you recognize they are the smartest fans in the league while also acting like the dumbest and most deranged. This is a fandom that launched a nutcase filming videos in front of jars of his own piss into a cult hero. They want you to recognize their history while also bemoaning it as the reason they’ll never be happy. They have Canadiens fans’ smugness without any of the success (even if the Habs’ success is mostly bullshit as well, as a majority of their Cups came when they gamed a system in a league comprised of six teams that were 90% drunk truck drivers that simply got lost and they tossed sticks and gear at).

Leafs fans demand you witness their blood-letting, which I assume was the only purpose of Maple Leafs Square. Whereas the Jets used to have a portrait of Queen Elizabeth in their arena, the Leafs should hang one off a Vietnamese self-immolating monk. Except the only thing Leafs fans are protesting is their own stability. To hear them tell it they’re the love children of Job and Sisyphus.

They get no help from their media, a group of idiots convinced of their superiority simply because of where they live. By the time you read this, or not too long after, you can bet some columnist will have connected last night’s loss to the atrocity in the Toronto burbs on Monday. Speaking of which, someone should have told that misogynistic, twisted, deranged fucko before he got in that van that if you can’t get laid in Toronto all you have to do is film a bunch of videos in front of all your toys, or ones of you showcasing your “NHL-level” ball-hockey skills on some playground while children who just wanted to get on the swingset that you closed off cry in the background, or produce a chart that shows how in fact Frank Corrado would have won a Hart by now and the strangest women in the world will write fanfic about you. Better yet, introduce all of Incel Toronto to Freddie Andersen and tell him it’s Game 7. Everyone scores!

The question is really how they got this way, because it’s not like they do this every year. Caps fans may be intolerable vampire-goths now but at least they snuff it to the team they hate most every goddamn year. The Leafs do this like a couple times a decade. There is no long stretch of heartbreak here, but you can bet Gardiner’s abstract pigeon pose leading to the winner last night will have yearly columns written about it until we all spin off into the sun.

None of this will change, given that Leafs media and fandom alike would show up with various clubs and spikes if their beloved William Nylander was traded for any d-man that doesn’t asphyxiate himself. Actually, they’d just show up with giant print-outs of graphs and spreadsheets they made up themselves while their spouses pack up their belongings.

The knives have come out for Auston Matthews, as if he didn’t have Krejci and Bergeron and Chara up his ass all series. We can only hope that he signs exactly a four-year deal when his ELC is up and then hightails it for the border the exact minute he becomes a UFA. You know he already wants to.

Actually, no, that’s what THE NATION wants. They want to drive all their starts out of town so they have more excuses to try and pierce their own nipples with an ice pick in public. And they should never get what they want. And then they can retire #34 and put it next to #17 and #13 and #93 and have a nice grouping of players who never played in a Final while wearing blue.

Good riddance. And oh, the Raptors are going to get just far enough so that LeBron can once again waltz in to the ACC, lay it across your forehead while singing, “Ain’t That A Kick In The Head?” and walk out before you even know what happened. Go ahead and pretend to care about TFC. We know the truth.

Everything Else

Watching The Party – FFUD’s First Round Preview: Leafs-Bruins or The Complain Department

By Sam Fels 1586 0

 vs. 

SCHEDULE: Game 1 Thursday, Game 2 Saturday, Game 3 April 16th, Game 4 April 19th

We all know the format for the NHL playoffs is pretty stupid. In fact the NHL playoffs, if you really think about it, are kind of stupid. We just played an 82-game regular season to figure out who the best teams are, and now we’re going to subject them to the vagaries of luck and injury in a two-month battle royal that doesn’t really give us the best team, just the hottest one. But let’s leave that and say the divisional system as constructed is a problem. So when fans and media say it’s not fair that two of the seven best teams in the league have to face each other in the first round, they’re not exactly wrong.

But because it’s Toronto and Boston, I don’t give a flying fuck. Fuck ’em.

Let’s break it down.

Goalies: There can’t be a worse person to be than the Leafs goalie in the playoffs. No one is watched by more and more closely. And really, Freddie Andersen has always been just good enough to break your heart. He was excellent two years ago in the first round against Nashville, but only played five games. His three other campaigns in the playoffs have not been impressive, though some were effected by Bruce Boudreau’s treating his goalies like they were foosball players. Really, Andersen had the same season this year that he did last year, and he was fine against the Caps. But fine wasn’t enough then, and fine probably isn’t going to be enough against the Bruins. He is capable of more, we’ve just rarely seen it.

If we wrote this a couple months ago, we’d say the Bruins have a big advantage here. But Tuuke Nuke ’em has only been ok since the end of February and was horrific in three April starts. However his playoff pedigree is far ahead of Andersen’s, and he wasn’t the problem against the Senators last year. So it’s whether we go with his current form, which is basically “meh,” or what he’s done in the playoffs before which is much more. Still, I would expect Tuukka to be slightly better than Freddie at worst.

Defense: It’s kind of a measure of the firepower of the Toronto forwards that they amassed as many points as they did with this blue line. It’s still not very good, even if they figured out that Travis Dermott was a neat toy to have every night. It’s not that Jake Gardiner or The Mike Rielly Assassination or Rod Hainsey are bad… it’s just that you’d struggle to think of them as top pairing guys. They’ve been fascinated with Nikita Zaitsev for a couple seasons and yet no one’s quite explained what it is he does. Roman Polak is a circus bear. Even with the Bruins banged up whoever they throw out against Bergeron and Marchand and Pastrnak you’d have to give the B’s the advantage. And if you don’t keep a top line from scoring in a series, you’re kind of fucked.

The Bs will be without Brandon Carlo, as his ankle went Gumby, but they did get the moon-faced mouth-breather Charlie McAvoy back which is more important. He’s reinvigorated Zdeno Chara to a new contract, and he’s one of the bigger reasons that the Bruins were so good this year. Torey Krug as a bum-slayer is what you’d want, and Kevan Miller is better than I think even though his first name is stupid. Adam McQuaid has a big, dumb face and a big, dumb game but thanks to McAvoy the Bs have a top pairing where the Leafs don’t.

Forwards: Whatever arguments you might have with their defense, the only team that can even claim to have the Leafs’ top nine right now is Winnipeg. When JVR and Tyler Bozak are on your third line, you are the envy of pretty much the whole league. Which means the Leafs can get at Krug in his own end and McQuaid anywhere through Kadri and Marleau and Marner and even Plekanec on the 4th line. The depth is scary and the Leafs’ best hope. It’s also a ton of speed the Bs are going to ask Chara to deal with, and he don’t got none no more.

The Bruins will start this series without both Nashes, Riley and Rick. Though missing Rick in the playoffs really isn’t a big deal. Without them though, this starts to look a little one line-ish. It’s a hell of a line, with Pastrnak-Bergeron-Marchand, but they’ll need more. Krejci and Backes on the second isn’t the worst you could do, but comparing it to the Leafs and you see the problem. Donato and Heinen are kids farther down the lineup that could be weapons, especially against the iffy Leafs defense. But the Bs will need some people to return before too long. And Babcock is going to play Komarov 25 minutes anyway. The other thing to note is that since 2011, Brad Marchand has been a playoff dog, and if that continues this definitely tips to the Leafs.

Prediction: I want to pick the Leafs, I really do. Their forward depth is going to be hard to deal with. But I don’t trust their blue line or Andersen to keep the Bs top line off the scoresheet, and the important players on the Bs have all done this before. Unless Marchand pulls his Copperfield act in the spring again, the Bs seem too much. It’s going to take a while, though. Bruins in 7. 

Everything Else

Game #48 – Maple Leafs vs. Hawks Q&A: With The Ex-PPP

By Sam Fels 2599 0

We can’t give you his name, as he’s shrouded in secrecy. He used to run PensionPlanPuppets, but now he just sits in a dark room plotting his revenge. You can follow him @MLSE, if you dare. 

We’ll start with simple stuff: Just what the hell is going on with this team? 
They’re doing better than last year somehow (better goal differential and more points through the same number of points) but most fans aren’t happy with how they’ve done it. Last year’s team was a swashbuckling team of kids that played with no fear. This year’s team is now a chip and chase team that is more focused on stopping the other team than in trying to force the game on their terms.
Is Mike Babcock, in fact, not a genius?
Babcock is an incredible coach. He does, however, have a few blind spots that we knew from his time in Detroit. Mainly, it’s that he favours (don’t you dare “fix” my Canadian spelling) veterans over youth and he has a clear idea of how he wants different aspect of his team to be built (muckers on the fourth line, defencemen with cement-filled skates that can absorb shots on the PK). Randy Carlyle was a little similar in that regard but obviously with a lot less ability (his own and the team’s). It does look like Babcock is starting to come around. Travis Dermott finally got a shot, Matt Martin may finally be a scratch, and Leo Komarov will be on the fourth line instead of dragging down Marleau and Kadri. Of course, that’s just for road games because Babcock doesn’t have last change. And it’s that need to control every aspect of the game that I think is his biggest issue.
What are the Leafs going to do at the deadline? We have to believe a d-man is on the list, no?
It’s been on the list for the last 12 years! If they could add a top pairing defenceman that pushes everyone down one spot on the depth chart (and gets Polak in the press box for good) then the defence suddenly becomes a pretty good group. If you can give Rielly better support and then have Gardiner/Zaitsev/Hainsey facing second tier competition and Carrick/Dermott eating up the rest then you have good skaters and puck movers on every line which is what this team needs to get back to being a fast, skilled team.
Name Kadri was a 30-goal scorer with 61 points and impressive metrics last year. All have dropped. What’s going on here?
Same thing that sewered the year before last: luck. You can split his season in two and you’ll see that the second half has seen him produce more shots but his shooting percentage plummet. His line has been struggling in terms of carrying the play compared to his career. Part of that is that I don’t think Komarov can face the toughs anymore and I’m not sold on Marleau being able to either (despite being a good addition). If Babcock trusted the Matthews line more at home then I think you’d see Kadri’s struggles turn around really quickly. Plus, in the last two games he’s made amazing passes to Marleau for goals that have been miraculously saved. It’s been that kind of stretch for him.
Is it time for Leafs fans to crack each other’s skull open and feast on the goo inside? Or is this kind of just a midseason lull and they’ll give Tampa everything they can handle in the playoffs?
It will always be skull cracking time with Leafs fans but that has nothing to do with how the team is doing so much as the feeling you get from talking to them. I think that the Leafs could possibly be having some come to Jesus moments that will bear fruit in the long term and they’re lucky enough to be in a division that is a total mess so there’s no pressure other than knowing they’ll face one of the two top teams in the NHL in the first round. I think that best case scenario, barring any big trades, is like last year: a gallant effort, some excitement, and a 5/6 game series loss to Tampa or Boston. After last year we’d all hoped for more but I don’t see much that gives me hope for more unless Babcock really starts changing how he dresses the team and Lou and Co. can get them a bit more help. But no big deal, these teams of young (looks at LA) studs (looks at Pittsburgh) always (looks at Chicago) eventually come good, right? (Looks at Edmonton, barfs)

 

Game #48 Preview

Preview

Spotlight

Q&A

Douchebag Du Jour

I Make A Lot Of Graphs

Lineups & How Teams Were Built

Everything Else

Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight – December 15

By John Pullega 1476 0

First Screen Viewing

Stars at Devils (6 p.m.)

Even though the Blackhawks are hopelessly eliminated from any shot at the playoffs by virtue of their inability to inhabit a playoff spot by the time the turkeys were pardoned (yes, I’m kidding), we’d be remiss not to watch the team mockingly flailing its collective scrotum in our faces in the standings. The Stars stand to leapfrog the Wild in the Wild Card standings with a point tonight, albeit with two extra games played. They’ll also look to get Jabba the Hitch his 800th win tonight, which is fitting, given that everyone in America is moonlighting as Annyong Bluth and seeing whichever iteration of a Star War we’re on now. They’ll start Kari Lehtonen and face a Taylor Hall-less (knee ouchie) Devils squad that’s lost three of their last four (1-2-1).

Second Screen Viewing

Maple Leafs at Red Wings (6:30 p.m.)

You watch this game for never-ending Schadenfreude of watching the Red Wings flounder. And the hope that Cock BabMike offers no quarter against his former squad. Plus the Leafs are probably top three in the best-looking sweaters department. The Leafs sans Auston Matthews, who misses his fourth straight game with a head injury, will face Jimmy Two First Names in net, as he and his 90.6 SV% try to end the Wings’s 1-5-5 skid over the last 11 games. Again, the Red Wings have lost 10 of their last 11. Not sure why they called it Little Caesers Arena, since the Wings are neither hot, ready, nor worth even the $5 their stadium’s namesake charges for pizza of a quality that you can find running through a box factory with dog shit on your shoes.

Other Games

Carolina at Buffalo (6 p.m.)

Los Angeles at New York (6 p.m.)

San Jose at Vancouver (9 p.m.)

Everything Else

You Ain’t Special, So Who Ya Foolin’?

By Sam Fels 2427 0

One of the things we’ve lamented most over our entire time doing this, and in a connected fashion probably one of the reasons for our “success,” is how inaccessible hockey coaches and media make information that might teach others the game. Getting any sort of useful nuggets of insight from a coach or player is akin to finding a good dentist in Atlantis. They just don’t give it to you. Most of the time I’ll give the players a pass, as stringing together sentences is enough of a challenge and they’re most assuredly following orders.

We all know why. Everyone takes their cues from football coaches, whom these days are taking their cues from Bill Belichick. But there was a holier than thou quality to football coaches long before Belichik turned it into something of an art, and this shit didn’t really fly when he was coaching the Browns. And even in football, it’s a little silly.

I’m struggling to find the video, but there was another perfect and infuriating example on HNIC’s pregame show on Saturday, which was setting up the Capitals-Leafs game that night. Both Mike Babcock and Barry Trotz were facing mini-controversies in how they sent out their forwards. Babcock has long refused to pair up Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews, even though they’ve been a fist in the face of God when he has. Trotz had split up Niklas Backstrom and Alex Ovechkin of late in a bid to juice scoring through more of the lineup.

The pregame show played clips of pressers each had earlier in the week. The clip of Babcock showed him responding to a question from some member of Toronto media person about the Matthews-Marner axis with, “When you coach the team you can set it up however you want. When I coach it I’ll do what I want.”

The clip of Trotz that followed wasn’t much better. When asked about Backstrom and Ovie–and by a female reporter but I’ll save that raised eyebrow for another time–Trotz’s response was, “Because I felt like it.” And he repeated that when pressed, and good on her for asking a follow-up, which seems to be a lost art these days.

What’s frustrating about these things is that no one was asking about specific game strategy. It’s not like we wanted Babcock to tell us how they were going to attack the Caps when John Carlson was on the ice that night. It’s like almost every coach doesn’t know that their team is being scouted by every other team in the league. If Babs feels that Marner and Matthews are too weak defensively to be playing together, you can be sure every other team knows that already. If Babs thinks that Marner needs the puck too much to be effective and Matthews hasn’t quite learned how to play without the puck totally effectively yet, or something like that, what’s the cost in telling your fans that? Sure, it doesn’t cost Babcock anything to keep his fans in the dark and questioning as long as the wins pile up. But it doesn’t cost him anything to not do so either.

And of course, I can totally understand the urge to tell the Toronto media to find something to spin on. We all do.

We face the same thing here in Chicago. Things are rosy for the moment, especially in the glow of Top Cat’s hat trick last night against several wildebeests masquerading as Anaheim Ducks. And if your next questions is, “Where would wildebeests get Anaheim Ducks unis?” believe me I’m right there with you. Still, A.D.B has shown he already has NHL top six skills, and yet he isn’t playing there. He fashioned a goal with his line last night, but the other two goals were when he was out there between line changes and got to run with Schmaltz and Kane. And this has kind of been the story all season.

At this point, we know Schmaltz is in the wing spot Top Cat would take in the top six because the Hawks want him to shoot more, and maybe give him a touch more space for his vision. Maybe they also don’t feel DeBrincat is ready for tougher competition. Maybe they don’t think Schmaltz has the strength or determination down low in his own zone yet to play in the middle.

But have we heard Q say any of this? None of this would be news to his opponents. They have scouts and those scouts have eyes. We’re basically guessing at what the reasons are. I’m pretty confident that the Predators know that for tonight Schmaltz is more likely to pass than shoot when in a given spot, no matter what Quenneville gives us or doesn’t.

While it’s pointless to continue to point to the NBA as comparison, one of the things serious NBA fans love about that league is that coaches give their press something. They’ll tell you if a guys spreads the floor from the four or they like his defense on the wing from the bench or whatever else. They’re not going to give you specific sets they’re going to run ahead of time but they’ll tell you why they did something in the past. You can learn something and watch your team differently.

Again, it doesn’t cost hockey teams anything to be run like this. We’ll still watch. It’s just annoying that they think they’re guarding government secrets. It might make for a more enjoyable time for everyone.

Everything Else

Your Friends And Neighbors – ’17-’18 Team Previews: This Buds For You

By 1678

The dichotomy of the Toronto Maple Leafs this year is probably going to drive you utterly insane. On the one hand, there’s likely no other team in the East that you’d be more excited to watch. They are loaded with young, fast talent marshaled by a coach who knows how to play a possession game. They are poised to do many big things this year, and their first three lines could honestly pour in the goals. 300 goals is not out of the question for this outfit.

On the other, the noise generated by the Leafs and more specifically their stupidly carnivorous media and fans has always been outsized by a huge margin for a team that until last year sucked to the nth degree. What’s it going to be when they’re a genuine Cup contender now? It’s probably not going to be like anything you’ve ever seen, because the last time the Leafs were this close Izzy was still in Guns N’ Roses. You’ll be sick of it by December 1st, guaranteed.

Strap in.

TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS

’16-’17 Record: 40-27-15  95 points (4th in the Flortheast)  Bounced in 1st round by the Caps

Team Stats 5v5: 50.3 CF% (13th)  49.2 SF% (20th)  51.7 SCF% (7th)  8.3 SH% (8th)  .929 SV% (19th)

Everything Else

Award Tour

By 1761

Been doing this every so often throughout the season, as we try and get a handle on who really should be taking home the baubles come June. Of course, almost none of these awards will actually go this way, because as expert as hockey people like to think they are most of them don’t look beyond “points” in any of these categories. The only caveat being when it comes to the Selke award, where they’ll also look at faceoff percentage and then points. But we can do better, and one day dorks like me will have their “King Felix Winning The Cy Young With 13 Wins” day. Until then, we’ll remain in the shadows, plotting our revenge (our next trip to Five Guys, really).

So, without further ado…whatever the hell ado is…

Everything Else

In Touch With Some Reality Beyond The Gilded Cage: Hawks 1 – Leafs 1 (Hawks win Stickball)

By 1231

Box Score

Natural Stat Trick

The Hawks tried something new tonight. After getting decked on the shot-board the past three games and asking Crawford and Darling to go Barnum and Bailey to get them two points, they methodically controlled the Leafs, who of the past four opponents contained the most high-end finish and thus could have made the Hawks pay for their wayward ways. Although this time the Hawks were trailing early, and thus had to chase a bit until Hayden equalized.

A third period that saw both teams go for it early and then look at each other and say, “You good with overtime?”, gave way to an exciting if not artificial OT where Hartmania ran wild on the Leafs, faking out Andersen from the circle to beat him to the stick side. And with that, the Hawks are now five points up in the division, thanks to their best March under Joel Quenneville.

Let’s clean it up:

Everything Else

Doing 180 On The Don Valley Parkway – Hawks at Maple Leafs Preview, Mandatory Family Function

By 1651

 at 

Game Time: 6:00PM CDT
TV/Radio: CSN, CBC, CITY, WGN-AM 720
Jeff Veillette and Steve Glynn Are Terrifying: Pension Plan

Sure, the Hawks have improbably vaulted themselves into basically a game and a half lead in the central as they close out their eastern Canadian swing tonight in the Dark Center Of The Universe that is Toronto, but they haven’t done it the right way. They take on too many shots, even though that’s a result of having leads, they capitalize on power plays, and they do so while paying players more than their entry level contract. All of these things are instantly disqualifiers for actual success, which is truly indicated by how much cap space a team has at the end of the year, thrown into a pivot chart against their possession stats and 5v5 goal differential, along with some other stupid fucking stats Steve Burtch made up in a craven, desperate, and pathetic attempt to get hired. And naturally, the Leafs are succeeding by all of those measures, and all the good stuff is because of Kyle Dubas (who shielded sex criminal players on the junior team he was GM for), and all the bad stuff is because of Lou Lamoriello. This is how Maple Leafs hockey works.