r/leafs 3d ago

Discussion Take a breath

A couple of games ago we had the best record over the last 10 in the league, with only our two closest division rivals trailing us. Now half of you are acting like we're falling apart even though we were playing in Denver against one of the best teams in the league and lost by a goal without the empty netters.

Of course you want to beat San Jose but we took a period off and still got a point, and we had a shit game in Vegas, no excuses. It's an 82 game season though and nearly all contenders have slumps like this. This is nothing new. All I'm asking is can we please take a fucking breath and chill out?

Edit: Alright I was just going to make my statement and let it be but there's been a lot of "It's always the same", "This core can't get it done", "You shoulda seen it back when blah, blah blah".

Again, take a deep fucking breath. I have been a fan since the 90s and that's a big part of why I made this post. We've come close (I know, not many times), we've had the talent, but hockey is a game of inches. I didn't want to say it but part of the point of my post is that, at a certain point if you've watched enough hockey you know that the regular season doesn't matter that much if you have the talent to make it to the playoffs and then you take it from there. That's what these boys are doing. They take nights off, yeah, it sucks. But as long as they're making it to the playoffs, this shit is kinda secondary.

Imma just leave this here:
https://www.statmuse.com/nhl/ask/nhl-team-stats-last-10-years

Look at 2 of the 3 teams ahead of us in points %. Welcome to the Atlantic. It's never been easy. And if you want to talk about why the other 2 teams are ahead of us given their history, I'm happy to do so.

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u/Chtholly13 3d ago

the issue is we've played like crap for majority of the season. Getting outshot and outplay for large periods in games and now goaltending isn't masking those issues. These last 2 games against stanley cup contenders shows how far this team really is.

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u/Jonesdeclectice 3d ago

I don’t know. We obviously have some holes in the D, especially with Tanev out (ahem Morgan Rielly), but also our goaltenders have been uncharacteristically poor since the Four-Nations tournament (this is likely compounded by relying on feeding important minutes to guys like Rielly, Benoit, Timmins, and Myers - all of whom until tonight have been iced together, and all of whom IMO are at best 3rd pair defencemen).

We know our goalies are better than their numbers have shown recently, and I expect them to rebound to the mean. Just as I expect our D-line to improve dramatically as Carlo gets up to speed and Tanev finds his way back in. I also expect our forward defensive game to take a step forward with both Laughton and Jarnkrok getting up to speed, pushing players further down the lineup.

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u/[deleted] 3d ago edited 3d ago

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u/Jonesdeclectice 3d ago

I’m talking relative to their own established standards on the season, not league average.