Matthews, Marner, and Nylander got their big fat cheques. They dont give a **** now because theyre young and making bank. Tavares is another question bc hes getting paid big but not performing when hes in his prime.

Yup but they couldnt do it without these guys, thats what you have to realize

Tampa won because they had Kucherov and point and Hedman. Did the depth help? Sure, but they dont win without those guys.
You know one thing tampa didnt do? They didn't go out and trade one of their top 4 players because they got **** luck and got swept by the blue jackets. They kept their elite guys and then added depth.
Yet here we are,arguing that the leafs need to remove top end tallent to fill out the depth.
Oh, and saying nylander is bad defensively just means you dont know anything about him.

I don't think the leafs need more players that can hit and fight , they need elite defensive forwards. If you look at Tampa, they obviously have elite talent, but they had 2 selke caliber players in their lineup (Cirelli, Coleman) and gourde, goodrow, and killorn also excellent defensively. St Louis had o'rielly, Schwartz, and sanford who are all elite defensively.

Lol, Matthews literally improved every facet of his game after signing, and after a rough half season, nylander was the most consistent player on the leafs.
You can argue marner didn't improve but he was still on a 90 point pace.
But somehow they dont care or something. Wow, if they cared the leafs would have the 80s oilers reborn!

Well, no, they could have because they were skilled enough. However good SKILLED depth certainly helped.
The point i made was really obvious, you dont get rid of great players to bring on good players because you lost. You keep great players and then add good players

Sure but esp in the Boston series if it wasn’t for goals from Coleman and Gourde at key times Tampa wouldn’t have won. It swayed momentum away from Boston. That Coleman goal where he scored mid-air helped tie a game where Tampa was down early and Boston had clear control of the puck. Coleman and Gourde both scored 5 goals in the playoffs they were extremely important imo. Goodrow’s penalty killing was helpful too with all the penalties Tampa took

You can add on top of good players if we didn't sign Tavares.

again. not saying the depth players didnt play their part, just that you are not going to improve a team by removing the talent at the top of the roster and replacing it with lesser players. Literally no one is against adding guys like Goodrow or whatever, they just think it's idiotic to move a guy like Nylander to do it. The Leafs HAD good depth with Kapanen and Johnsson last year, but one was seriously injured (also Mikheyev who was looking like great depth was injured) and the other just got shooting % screwed (like the entire leafs roster because Columbus some how had 2 tim thomas' during those 5 games).
By trading for, and over paying for, Goodrow and others Tampa showed that you can add those guys without sacrificing your elite guys. That's what the leafs need to do, and are trying to do. It doesnt always work, remember Columbus going all out a couple years back? yeah, looks bad now but if it worked they'd be brilliant. Same with Tampa, imagine they ran into a brick wall again last playoffs and lost or whatever after doing all the same moves, they'd look pretty screwed now eh?

then you'd have less great players and a worse roster.

This is garbage simple as that

Agreed there’s going to be cheap gems out there on different teams. If Dubas can find them and bring them in then that’s the best way to fix this team. I guess it’s the way Dubas comes off saying the team is harder to play against now like he’s figured it all out. Brodie is an excellent pick up, replacing Clifford with Simmonds is good, Thornton Iunno, Vesey maybe, Bogosian is good so we’ll see

We would have great players in Matthews and Marner and build around those two talents.

yeah, you gotta roll the dice, it also doesnt help that Dubas had to spend a good hunk of his time and resources mopping up after Lou left him an utter mess of bad contracts and only one good defenceman.
If Zaitsev had had a managble deal, or Marleau didnt need to be premium'd to move out etc the leafs would have been in significantly better shape to add some solid depth.

This thread was interesting. I will just say that if nylander is being traded because he’s soft and doesn’t show up in the playoffs, bjorkstrand has 3pts in 10gms. He’s not soft I guess but whatever.

and they'd be a worse team with less great players. If you can add great players, you always do it. Always. Solid depth is significantly easier to find and any unrealistic dream you have about what the leafs could have done with that extra 5.5 mill in cap space is pure and utter fantasy

"If you can add great players, you always do it" how many playoff round wins did Tavares get the Leafs?

Ah that Marleau situation. That was the Marner, Kapanen, Johnsson offseason. If Dubas could’ve bridged Marner then Marleau could’ve stayed because it was just for 1 more year. These are some of the Dubas question marks that make me itch

I would take Dubas as our draft expert but in terms of signings, I wish we had someone else. Glad we got useless Vesey to show us how to go for a cup run

how many did stamkos get tampa?

A cup

Marner would have needed to agree to that contract. And that entire thing could have been avoided if Lou didnt pay a 40 year old player 6 million for 3 years and give him a full NMC for the duration.

Lmao yea these contracts are what’s different about Dubas. He’s either really nice or it’s the players in Toronto or it’s a little of both

wow, that was a hell of a single game he had if it won them the cup

Bruh how many eastern conference finals did Stammer go to with Tampa. They went to the finals once with him.