Does anybody even like Marner anymore? Like Red Bull tastes bad now because I associate it with this negotiation. I’m probably gonna have to change my insurance provider. — Todd™ (@Totally_Offside) September 10, 2019 I’m willing to bet there’s a little hyperbole from ol’ Todd in this tweet, but nevertheless, here I am pondering its…
This is another in my questions you’ll automatically answer “no” to series. Having also written about Matt Read and Ben Harpur earlier, I feel I’m embarking on an unfortunate trend of writing about replacement level players who barely fit into the Toronto Maple Leafs plans going forward. This seems like a ridiculous endeavour, but unfortunately,…
Is it still a bridge if it only gets one side where it wants to go? Yes, Jon. Those are called one way bridges, and you take one to work every day and one home every night. That being said, those aren’t particularly efficient bridges and leave people on one side wanting a hell of…
Ilya Mikheyev Jason Spezza Pontus Aberg Nic Petan Kenny Agostino Jeremy Bracco Egor Korshkov These are players seemingly ahead of Matt Read in the battle for the bottom six wing roster spots… If we assume that Marner starts the season unsigned and Hyman will be injured for a while the Leafs will start the year…
YOU GET A NEW PARTNER. YOU GET A NEW PARTNER. EVERYONE IS GETTING A NEW PARTNER!!! Exciting times on the Leafs blue line. Gone are Nikita Zaitsev, Ron Hainsey, Igor Ozhiganov, Jake Gardiner, and much less ceremoniously Andreas Borgman and Calle Rosen. There are a lot of new faces too. Tyson Barrie, Cody Ceci, Jordan…
Earlier this summer my co-worker Thomas Williams provided you all with the straight poop on how lousy Ben Harpur is as an NHL defensemen. The results left little room for optimism and left me frightened that the Leafs would use up one of their slots in a questionable defensive group on the reanimated corpse of…
I will save all of you on Twitter and Facebook the trouble and say no for you right now. I get it, the declining numbers and performance don’t make much of a case for him. The good in the room/veteran presence argument doesn’t hold much water, and frankly I’m a maroon for even suggesting it,…
Traverse City? More like Tavares City when the Leafs rookies are done with it, amirite? Folk’s? Okay, fine. Getting excited for the Rookie Tournament isn’t as easy to do when it’s not a first look at players like Matthews, Marner, or Nylander, but it signals the shift away from the 10,000 Marner contract posts to…
Earlier this week Kyle Dubas stated that trading Marner isn’t something the team is exploring. That’s probably a good thing since no matter what he costs, Marner is pretty hard to replace, and it seems unlikely that a team is willing to drop its best assets and then pay out another $9M+ of salary to…
Players haven’t even taken the ice for training camp in September and it’s already time to start worrying about how tired they will be in April. That may sound ridiculous, but alas, planning out goaltender starts throughout the season is probably a good idea for a few reasons. The first being communication to the goaltenders…
IT’S THE RETURN OF THE INSIDERS. Bob McKenzie is back from vacation. Leafs Lunch is back on the radio. Dreger is slowly moving away from promotional golf tweets, and we’re getting back to the business at hand, and that’s that Mitch Marner isn’t signed and training camp opens pretty darn soon. Dreger says there’s been…
I promise I won’t mention Alex DeBrincat in this post. Dammit, I just mentioned DeBrincat. Crap. I mentioned DeBrincat again. Okay, fine. After this introduction I will be done with mentioning DeBrincat, a player that a good number of us thought was an excellent fit for the Leafs at the 31st overall pick in 2016….
