Mailbag: The Encore

I asked people for questions that weren’t the usual ones. Yesterday, I got a lot of them. So many that we had a second mailbag today! This works out very well, actually; we’re going to be turning the Mailbag into a Tuesday thing from this point forward, so consider this a passing of the torch.

Definitely. This is probably the lowest his value has been since he joined the team in 2009, and at the end of the day, we’re talking about an elite forward who will still be among the best right wingers in the entire league when this team is ready to compete again. While cashing in is nice, I’d prefer to hold on to him all the way through rather than sell low.

Depends on what you mean. What happened that took him out for the season? He suffered an Achilles injury in the spring that required year-ending surgery, and he’ll be back to play in the last year of his entry-level deal next year. What happened to him as a player? Well I don’t know if anything happened. The team thought they were getting something they weren’t. Biggs is a bottom six forward and should be treated as such for the rest of his deal, at which point the team can make a decision on whether to continue the development process. With Frederik Gauthier being younger and (presumably) better, though, that could lead to a tough decision. Let’s have this talk again in twelve months, though.

This is another “depends” comment. The team was more exciting to watch at even strength, just because they were exceptionally good skaters compared to the rest of the league. At the same time, there were arguably more big names on the 2011/12 team, they had a more lively playoff crowd, and they were better on special teams.

For the sake of the team’s future, though? This team made you more confident than the latter. It’s much more rookie driven.

I think this may hold some weight. Not that I think the Leafs were more biased about it than any other team, but like in the case of any job, you feel that you’ll get the best acknowledgement for your efforts when your bosses are able to see it. Many teams have probably made these types of decisions based off of that cognitive bias, just like business have done it.

What Dubas is doing here is stating that he cares more about the result rather than having to see the process himself. This isn’t something that holds true for everything in player development, but if it’s just a matter of fitness, it’s not vital.

Dion open-ice checked the towers. MLSE made money off of Game 7.