From Meghan Chayka on twitter. Good context to add in on top of Sammy’s struggles. Obviously the D injuries are a big point, but I feel like that’s a lazy excuse: defense is a team concept and forwards have a big role. The departures of certain forwards likely have had a big hand in this.
by Significant_News_638
28 Comments
I think we all knew coming into this year that they were going to suck defensively after the losses we took in the off season but I don’t think anyone could have predicted it would be that bad
Yikes
Matches the eye test, shocking how much worse they’ve been defensively this year
The odd man rushes from 7 to 25 really jumps out. Basically indicates either the defense are making much worse pinch decisions, or the forwards aren’t as responsible hanging high in the zone. Likely both.
Many people said before the season this would be the case. Even fully healthy our defence is soft and small and even with those characteristics they don’t put up points or move the puck well. It’s a horribly constructed group.
Woof.
This is no surprise everyone knew our d core is the area of the team that needs a major overhaul.
Clearly this is Keefe’s fault /s
Yeah, that’s not good.
I’d really like us to go out and solidify the backend in the off-season with 2 new pieces.
This shouldn’t be a surprise. Timmins, Lajoie, Lagesson and Benoit are #6 defensemen at best, Brodie and Gio are both past their primes, McCabe is fine but is what he is, and Lilly has been hurt.
This D corp is Rielly and a rag tag group of past their prime or barely NHL quality guys trying to hold things together in front of bad goaltending and only a few offensive guys that are really being tasked with playing defensively.
I’m not sure that there is a system or combination of lines that can hope to cover up for the lack of quality on the back end, and the leafs are going to have to out score their problems and hope the front office can make a big move to bring in some help.
our team defense sucks but lets pin it all on a mid starter goalie that was good for us last season.
I feel like there’s been a mentality shift with Tre to sacrifice some defence for some offence. You can tell with the guys like Klingberg, Domi and Bertuzzi that he brought in.
It just really sucks that our defence has seen a lot of injuries and our goaltending has either been injured or really struggled.
I think that, at its core, this team is better than what they’ve shown this year so far and it shows in the way they’ve been able to step up at dire moments to force overtimes. What remains to be seen is how this team will play when it is healthy and what will be done about goaltending. It’s pretty obvious that in Keefe’s eyes, Woll is the starter. But is that enough?
I wonder how much of this also has to do with Van Ryns coaching of the defense and his structure. Blues fans were very much on the fuck that guy train when he got hired by the Leafs. Most comments were talking about bad defensive structure, so that could be part of it
Have there been changes in the coaching staff since last year?
>Obviously the D injuries are a big point
I don’t think it is a big point. We had the same injuries to D last year and it wasn’t this bad. This year our D is just garbage. Brodie has completely fallen off a cliff.
Also, even last seasons numbers weren’t anything spectavular. Just average. This is even more proof that the Leafs are and always have been an average to bad team that are propped up by 4 insanely talented individual. Over the course of an 82 game season, these players can win you more than they lose, but you don’t have the luxuty of 82 games in the playoffs. You only have 7, and when you relay on 4 players to win you games, you need more than 7 games to get you through a series.
This core will never accomplish anything. Signing Willy for 10 million and having JT take a lower number solves nothing. We are in the exact same position we have always been putting all our money into 4 players.
Mike Van Ryn defense innit.
But I don’t buy the “defense injuries” excuse. That may be a small part, but we played Justin Holl the entire season on the 2nd pair last year. We played a damn near month without Rielly and Brodie. Muzzin was out after October. Fucking Jordie Benn and Victor Mete got games. Noted defensively responsible Rasmus Sandin was playing until the trade deadline.
Absent from last season right now is Kerfoot, Bunting, Aston-Reese, and Acciari who were all defensively decent at worst. Kerfoot was always known as a defensively aware forward, while Acciari was always considered a defensive specialist. We also lost Schenn who came in and did quite well for himself, as well as Benn who would easily slot in today. Up front brought in Bertuzzi, Reaves, and Domi, none of whom are considered defensive stalwarts by any means, it should no surprise to anyone that our defensive numbers have tanked especially taking into account the injuries, Brodie’s sharp decline, and Samsonov getting in his own head.
It’s a .500 team masquerading as better because of a lot of loser points.
Anyone have Justin Holl’s address? I think mailing him an apology card is a good idea for the holidays.
Everyone knew this was going to happen this year. Domi, Bertuzzi, Reaves, Klingberg etc. The team decided scoring was more important
Losing players like Kerfoot and Bunting didn’t help and we didn’t replace them with any more defensive minded guys either.
substituting defensively sound players for players known for being bad defensively was always a concern
Oof…
Injuries have been a bummer but I think it’s a bit of a knock on Treliving that all he did to address the defence in the offseason was sign …. John Klingberg.
The good forwards he added (Domi and Bertuzzi) aren’t known for their defence either so it’s especially surprising he added those 2, didn’t address the D at all, and thought that would be good enough.
Would love to see if all of those personnel changes in the off seasons that are impacting our defensive numbers have increased our offense enough to compensate. Something tells me that’s not the case.
https://vlp.to/kBNCX8S2
We had a lot of good defensively responsible forwards which we no longer have. Kerfoot and Engvall come to mind. They are black holes offensively but I guess defence from forwards is pretty important too eh