“They’re a young team” gets tossed around an awful lot in pro sports, no? “Ahh, cut this team some slack. They’re young, still learning to win”. I mean, you’ve got to learn to win, otherwise I’m assuming you’d just spend all your time learning to lose. Not a place any team wants to be. But…
Person 1: “Cody Ceci is bad. He shouldn’t even be in the NHL.” Person 2: “I don’t know. I mean, maybe you’re right. He has been on some really poor Sens teams though.” Person 1: “Nope, he’s terrible. The numbers say he’s always been getting crushed in shot-attempt share, and he’s 26 now. He is…
Well, this is it. Hockey is back this week. The Leafs have made pretty much all their final cuts in preparation for their season opener tomorrow night against the Senators, and that means it’s time for us to get some last-minute preview content out the door before the games mean something. With that in mind,…
In case you haven’t heard, Rasmus Sandin is a Toronto Maple Leaf. In what became easily the biggest story of camp these last two weeks and stretching back over the last year, the 2018 first-rounder shot up the organization like a rocket to nab a NHL roster spot and will make his debut a couple…
With the obvious caveat that we shouldn’t read too much into preseason game results, this training camp for the Leafs has been interesting in a few ways. Toronto had significant roster turnover in the summer, and with these new faces like Spezza, Barrie, Kerfoot, and Ceci, there was a lot to take in about how…
The Leafs are going to do a few things differently this season, so you can go ahead and make peace with that. The roster has had its fair share of turnover, but tactically we can expect to see some new things as well. Out are assistant coaches DJ Smith and Jim Hiller, in are Paul…
Yesterday Katya Knappe at Pension Plan Puppets published a very good piece about the Marner situation that does exactly as its title says: Blows away the smoke, and shows that his choice is actually quite simple. The basic premise is that, as the Leafs get closer to opening night on October 2nd, the way they’ve…
Yes, you’re reading that correctly. The negotiations between Marner and the Leafs are still at a point where the sides are not close, and the insistence from Marner’s agent that he is paid as much as Auston Matthews is causing the Leafs to delay naming their captain, according to multiple reports. Making the radio rounds…
For those who might be unfamiliar with the story, here is a quick rundown of how the Leafs came to put together their analytics department when Kyle Dubas was hired in 2014: In that summer, Toronto hired Cam Charron (then-editor of this very website), Rob Pettapiece, and Darryl Metcalfe to create a small group of…
The restricted free agent dominoes haven’t quite started to fall just yet, but with the signing of Blue Jackets’ defenceman Zach Werenski this morning, the talk of comparable value is sure to take off again for the next couple days, especially with training camps opening this week. Given Werenski is a blue-liner, his signing doesn’t…
It’s been somewhat widely reported for a while now that if Mitch Marner can’t come to an agreement with the Leafs soon he’s going to head overseas to suit up for another team. In the case of Marner’s agent Darren Ferris, this has been a pretty classic scheme from his playbook, with him going down…
For the five billionth time, let’s start things off by getting this out of the way: It’s September and a huge list of high-profile restricted free agents have not signed new deals, Mitch Marner included. It’s a somewhat unprecedented situation, this whole thing. And we keep saying it looks like a change in the way…
