Fire Keefe. He's lost the room. Trotz is available and has a desire to coach an original six team. Knows how to coach an underperforming offensive powerhouse (ex. Washington) to play smarter winning hockey.
Dubas - has built elite teams again and again on paper that come so close, yet so far. The odds of the teams he has built flopping like they have have to be so low. He's done a good job even if the results haven't shown it yet, at least give him until the year's end.
The core is elite, trade Marner? You're not going to win that trade. Trade Matthews? Same. Nylander? Has been arguably the best player on the team.
Break up Matthews and Marner. Maybe you give AM - WN and JT - MM a try, or maybe you go HBK style line and try Matthews with some combo of Kerf/Bunting/Jarnkrok/etc and give Marner his own third line, since JT - Willy is clicking right now. Idk. But it needs to be broken up, at least for a while.
Change is needed, but let's not get too carried away here. Fire the coach, add another goalie if it looks like Murray is out way long term, and add another defenceman. At the deadline, if Muzzin/Murray hurt and there's still some cap space left, maybe add another forward too.
This team can turn it around, but Keefe has lost the room. A few minors tweaks outside of that would be nice, but trade Marner? Stop it.
Under the proposed lineup, the stars would all play fewer minutes. Roughly 14 mins 5v5 for each of the top 3 lines, 8 mins for the 4th line. Then assume roughly 5 mins PP time and 5 mins PK time, PK going to the 4th liners and Jarnkrok (no Marner on PK to conserve more properly), 3.5mins PP to the top guys, 1.5mins PP to the second unit. Very balanced attack, any top 3 line is a major threat, and the 4th line is a shutdown line.
Means the core 4 play 17-18 mins a night, bringing them down quite a bit. Obviously they'd probably get a little more as this estimate wouldn't include putting them out when you need a goal, a shutdown, etc, so more 17.5 - 19 mins ish, but still controls it more.
Next man up into the lineup later in the season would be Knies for any top 3 line, bottom line would be NAK.
Garland has been one of my favourite targets for a while, bring it on. Also, I love Trotz, but is he necessarily the answer? Its been reported that he wants to transition into being a GM, which would make him an ideal fit for TOR for this year alone. I could foresee Trotz coaching this season and then perhaps he moves into the role of GM with Toronto assuming Dubas isnt extended. If that were to occur, whose our coach next year? That much turnover is tough on the players
We wouldn't trade Matt Roy unless a 2023 first was involved. And when we have Alex Turcotte, Tyler Madden, Francesco Pinelli and Sam Helenius in the system, why in the world would we want Fraser Minten to be a significant element of that deal, or any deal?
We would be interested in trading you Sean Durzi or Sean Walker or Jordan Spence for Kaiden Guhle or Jordan Harris, but you're not Montreal.
Matt Roy is not available. Sean Walker, Sean Durzi, Jordan Spence, and Helge Grans are all available for the right price. Roy is going nowhere.
Quoting: OldNYIfan
We wouldn't trade Matt Roy unless a 2023 first was involved. And when we have Alex Turcotte, Tyler Madden, Francesco Pinelli and Sam Helenius in the system, why in the world would we want Fraser Minten to be a significant element of that deal, or any deal?
We would be interested in trading you Sean Durzi or Sean Walker or Jordan Spence for Kaiden Guhle or Jordan Harris, but you're not Montreal.
i get it. thought he might be given the huge RD surplus. But i suppose the actual player acquired is less important to the point i'm trying to shoot for in this post
Garland has been one of my favourite targets for a while, bring it on. Also, I love Trotz, but is he necessarily the answer? Its been reported that he wants to transition into being a GM, which would make him an ideal fit for TOR for this year alone. I could foresee Trotz coaching this season and then perhaps he moves into the role of GM with Toronto assuming Dubas isnt extended. If that were to occur, whose our coach next year? That much turnover is tough on the players
i think the plan would be more like sign him to a 3 year deal or something, and then if he still wants GM you either see what the Leafs status for GM, or he moves elsewhere. Last coaching stint here and then progress from there
Sharks has been wanting a 2nd for Reimer without retention.
They don't need to move him either.
fair enough. we'll see what the price is later in the year, but I guess the actual player acquired isn't as important to the point of this post if you know what i mean
I get it. I thought he [Roy] might be given the huge RD surplus. But I suppose the actual player acquired is less important to the point I'm trying to shoot for in this post
You're absolutely right that an RhD is available due to our excess supply. But a surplus of numbers doesn't necessarily equate to a surplus of talents. Roy (and Grans down the line) are primarily shut-down defenseman, and not as replaceable as an offensive-minded one, which we have in plenty. And I agree with you completely that trading Marner or Nylander is not realistic at this point; that ship has already sailed. It was entirely predictable -- and I think that you were among those who predicted -- that a defense of Sandin, Giordano, Holl and Liljegren simply wasn't going to cut it. But now that most teams' rosters are pretty well set, it's going to be extremely difficult to work out a deal whereby you upgrade the defense while keeping both teams under the salary cap. Who needs, and can afford, a RW with a $7 million or $11 million cap hit?
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