trying something in the preseason when they just lost two depth guys to injuries and are gonna rest a few others =/= sticking with marner on D

It’s not a permanent switch lol. It’s in certain situations, mostly when they pull their goalie, maybe on the power play. He’s not going to be a d full time.

Preseason is really important and this means Marner is forever on D... guess you didnt get the same memo as this guy

Sounds like something Randy Carlyle would’ve done with Phil Kessel

It's not like Toronto's defensemen play much defense as it is, so why not?

top 5ish defensive team in the league over the last few years, baby

Goals Against by Team: 2019-2022

Official statistics would suggest otherwise:

Niemela not ready?

goals means bad goaltending, not bad defence

Goalie isn't played in a vacuum. Poor team defense leads to poor goaltending.

Toronto's "bad" goaltenders move on to be successful elsewhere, and goaltenders that were successful before going to Toronto end up becoming "bad."

At some point, it's no longer the goaltenders' fault.

Still have to put some blame on the defence because your goaltender isn’t much without at least a semi-competent defence

Nashville has allowed 4 less goals over that span, are they terrible at defence too? Minnisota, notoriously lamented as a defence first team allowed 3 more. Dallas of all teams is the 5th best defensive team by that metric (counting out seattle for obvious reasons)

goals against is a terrible metric for measuring actual defence because it lacks pretty much all context.

that's why other stats exist, raw goals against doesnt tell you anything because it has zero context. It's as useless at measuring team defence wins is at evaluating goalies

The stat was goals against

heres some others over that span
CF% 3rd
FF% 8th
xGA-11th
Shots For%-8th
Scoring chances for %-2nd
HDCF%-2nd

etc etc etc

"goals means bad goaltending, not bad defence" -JaredOfLondon

Just gonna leave that here...

yeah, without context just like your goals against stat. par for the course if you wanna make a point and dont care about the truth behind it eh?

Not at all.

Toronto's defensemen have always been good at jumping into the play and contributing offensively. They are one of the best teams in the league at doing that. Hence why all the stats that you posted are relative to the offense they provide.

The problem is that they don't really have any concept of team defense. They think that only 6 skaters should play defense every game, not 18. They've adopted the strategy of trying to outscore their defensive problems, which when you have a high powered offense like they do, works out a very high percentage of the time.

However, when you play a seven game series against a team that is just as talented, they are able to stifle your offensive production and expose your lack of team defense.

To be fair, Toronto did improve in the team defense regard this season (very noticeable in Matthews' improved two-way play), but they still have a long way to go before it's anywhere near "top five" as you claim.

no, all of those stats show that the leafs have the puck much much more than their opponents, which is the goal of defence. The leafs get the puck and keep it at a significantly higher rate than pretty much every team in the league. they have less scoring chances, less dangerous scoring chances and less offence in general against them compared to the entire league. That is literally defence.
You are really gonna be here talking about pure goals against and hand wave half a dozen actual defensive metrics? come on man.

Funny. I thought the goal of defense was to play defense.

Watch your language

funny, when you play defence all of the things i talked about happens. when you dont, that's when the other team has all the shots and scoring chances. Wild i know

As to your other point. Yes, they have a less scoring chances against relative to their offensive chances for, but that doesn't hold up for raw chances against.

This past season (their defensively improved season), they were in the middle third when it came to high and medium danger shots against. They were top 2 in that same metric in that same category on offense.

So when comparing relative numbers (Shots For %, Scoring Chances For %, Corsi & Fenwick For %), Toronto is going to be near the top because they generate so much offensively, but their raw defensive output is not near the top of the league.

This was the argument that people made when they were making the case for Erik Karlsson and PK Subban as the best defensemen in the league.

"Well they have the puck for 80% of the game, who cares if they're terrible in their own zone?"

I love when people who dont understand the stats try to use this as some sort of gotcha. You do realise that PK Subban and Erik Karlsson were two of the best defenders in the league because when the puck was in their end, it was never in their end for very long and then spent almost all the time in the other teams end, which is the entire point of defence?
Karlsson would take the puck from anyone in the league and then get the puck out of his own end and usually create a good scoring chance for his own team and Y'all pretending that's not good defence because you cant wrap your noodle around a defender who doesnt stand in front of the net and cross check dudes while his goalie gets hammered with shots