Pls explain to me how Drai is “tremendously” better than Matthews ?? U have to be a casual fan, only looking at one side of the puck. Leon is by far one of the worst defensive players in the league. But still, I look forward to hearing you arguments

Exactly lol, some ppl look at how many points a player gets and disregard any other stats lmao

If they give Caleb jones an increased role and play Evan Bouchard, I think its possible the oilers can win the division.

Draisatl isn't better that Matthews, but its close. He was awful defensively when he played with mcdavid, but the 2nd half of last season he was average defensively when he centered his own line

I wouldnt say tremendously better but as another Flames fan I do agree with @TheFlamingC that Draisaitl is the better player. However its a pointless argument since we are talking about top 10 centers in the league

I totally agree lol

Well on this site, if a player has a leaf on his chest he's automatically terrible as well. So everyone is better regardless of reality.

Not at all, zero of the Canadian teams were good defensively, so what does the 3rd best offence have to worry about when they very much improved their defence and have a much better coach as well. It's highly unlikely they have as many injuries and judging by Andersen's past he'll be a solid goalie again. There is mountains of evidence to suggest TO is going to have a really big year and saying they will only be average is essentially wanting them to fail and hoping all the outlier stuff happens again.

Umm... Vancouver and Calgary have good defense but yea man

I've never met anyone that disagrees with me on this actually. I think Barkov is better than Matthews. Matthews isn't winning any Selke's even if Draisaitl's d is bad. McDavid doesn't play with him anymore 5-on-5 so don't use that argument and the leafs have an equally dangerous PP when healthy. I can't defend his defence but the bottom line is that if you have a 130 point, 50 goal pace, you are better. Upon more thought, it isn't tremendous and I was too harsh but I will never budge on my opinion that's he's better

Vancouver was not good defensively last season. They got by with fantastic goaltending. Calgary is a good team though, I just never really feel 100% confident in them. Not enough strength down the middle and I think losing Brodie coupled with Gio's age could make for some problems. I do like Tanev though.

I like Brodie but after his collapsing on the ice in 2019 there is no way I would have signed him to play on my top pairing. Toronto is taking a ton of risk with his signing, IMO they should have targeted someone like Hamonic.

My prediction(not in order, just who makes it):

Toronto
Montreal
Edmonton
Winnipeg

Colorado
St Louis
Vegas
Arizona

Tampa
Carolina
Dallas
Columbus

Islanders
Boston
Pittsburgh
Washington

Don't think they're taking that big a risk, tbh. He appears to have made a full recovery after a one time incident and went on to play the remainder of the season quite fantastically, plus playoffs. Also, considering he's a 20 million dollar investment in the middle of a global pandemic where everyone is losing money, I'm sure the organization, which has access to a ton more information than us, did their due diligence regarding that whole situation. And, if by chance they're wrong and this ends up being a recurring thing, I'm pretty sure Brodie would put his health and safety first and step away to be with his family, which, yeah would mean the Leafs would have to explore other avenues like the trade market, but they spent no assets on Brodie and were able to recuperate full value for the pieces they moved out to accommodate him, so they wouldn't really be at a loss.

Like I said I like Brodie always thought he was a good player, maybe my own family history with cardiac incidents plays a role here as well but I probably wouldn't have taken that risk. Your risk of a cardiac incident increases significantly with each one. It may not have cost the Leafs any assets other than money but if he does decide not to play and opts out of the season or worse has another episode on ice then the Leafs defense is significantly worse. I wonder though, if a player chooses to opt out does his cap hit still count against the team or is it like LTIR. Cause if Brodie sits out and his cap hit counts that puts the Leafs in even worse position.

Not as far as I know. If a player opts out, they don't even get paid their salary and they wouldn't be on your roster, so I can't imagine it would count against the cap.

Lmao that is true