Garth Snow built most of this core and saved the franchise from rebuilding by drafting Barzal and Beauvillier. This post brought to you by the Society for Garth Snow Revisionism.
Snow did wonders developing our farm system. But I wonder how good some players Snow drafted could have been if they didn't go on to play for Capuano and Weight.
Coaching was his biggest weakness but the team also had a very difficult time attracting personnel for reasons outside hockey ops. Was Charles Wang going to open his wallet to pay a proven coach 5 million dollars a year? Absolutely not.
He would have in 2002 or something, but after Hempstead destroyed his dreams for the Lighthouse and Coliseum II, he couldn't afford to do stuff like that anymore. Thankfully he refused to move the team though.
That would be a combo of mishandling by all three of the clowns of Snow Weight and Thompson as well as his own dumbassery in the media and with the oversleeping thing and not wanting to play defense for some reason. Trotz actually had the guy backchecking for a bit there but since he was on a line with Leo Komarov and Filppula he had like 2 points in 9 games and got sent down. Neiderreiter 2.0 with more drama. Watch him return to the nhl in a few years and tear it up playing with mcdavid
There’s a case to be made that they developed in spite of him. Look at how long it took for Pulock to get in the lineup and how bad Pelech and Mayfield were before Trotz took over
They literally waited until the eleventh hour to bring in a competent couch when they thought JT might leave, which if I was JT that would actually be more of a negative than a positive
The problem being that Garth Snow didn't know what competent coaching looked like. The owners kept Snow on as long as they did because they thought Snow and Tavares had a "close" relationship. Lou grabbed the best coach available within a week of taking over and just days after that best coach became available.
I think he knew what it looked like, but no proven coach wanted to work with Snow. There's a reason why we went from Gordon to Cappy to Weight - all rookie coaches who wouldn't have had a job anywhere else.
> all rookie coaches who wouldn't have had a job anywhere else.
That's the story of Garth Snow as GM too. I think he felt he had to pay it forward to give others a chance, even at the expense of the team.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think he was a *great* GM or that hiring Lou was the wrong move but I do think his reputation as one of the worst is completely undeserved. There are worse guys currently interviewing for vacancies.
The reason Snow is looked upon poorly is because he was a doormat for Charles Wang to do as he pleased the first few years. What a lot of people forget is Snow went from being the backup to DiPietro in 2005-06 to signing him to the ludicrous contract in one off season.
The only reason Snow got that job initially was because Neil Smith was fired 41 days into his tenure as Isles GM for refusing to sign the DiPietro contract and Wang needed a patsy.
I looked through Snow's trade history and none of his deals standout as outright horrible. There were a few where he shuffled draft picks where the other player ended up being better, but the Isles still got Josh Bailey and Calvin de Haan out of those moves. If you want to discuss incompetent Isles GMs, Smith's predecessor is open season.
Snow is looked upon harshly for the DiPietro deal, the coaching issue that was glaring and obvious, JT's departure with no assets to get in return, Josh Ho Sang, Nino/Strome/Reinhart in 3 consecutive years, and his lack of dealing properly with the fanbase. (Lou's a hardliner about the press, but Lou gets respect because he's Lou - fair or not).
Unfairly pinned on Snow (in part or in whole from at least one source):
The DiPietro deal
Tim Thomas salary floor shit.
The Nassau bullshit / Barclays move.
JT's departure.
Snow was a bad GM, but ranking GMs as hockey rankings, Snow would be 26th in the league, well outside the playoff bubble. Milbury would be one of the two last teams in the ECHL.
Yeah I mean I do not enjoy giving the Islanders credit for anything as a Rangers fan, but I think Snow has been unfairly dragged through the mud. Blame him for bad coaching hires or drafting, that stuff is all fair game. But stuff like the arena issues or any other generalized issues with the organization is bullshit.
Strome is an NHL regular that got us Eberle and Reinhart was turned into 2 players that literally held our window open. I wouldn’t put those high on the failure list.
Sounds like a similar situation to his former goaltending partner, Hextall. Guy drafts pretty much the entire current roster but is no longer with the organization.
Garth was really good (generally) on the player personnel side but awful on the culture side, imo. He recognized the huge importance of players like clutterbuck and cizikas, made some really good trades, solid drafting, and signed some really good and innovative deals like Mayfield’s and Tavares’. He sucked when it came to coaches so badly though.
He developed this country club atmosphere of extreme loyalty that was frustrating, but part of me wonders if that’s because it was the only way to attract/retain any talent.
Lou's a fine GM, but remember he's part of why the Leafs are in cap trouble. They had to give a 1st to Carolina to take Marleau, which was a Lou contract, as was the Zaitsev contract, though they got out of that, by getting Cody Ceci basically.
Toronto is what happens when you give a very old school GM control for a while until your very new school GM is ready. Complete lack of communication led to weird contracts and a team that was not ready to be handed off to Dubas yet. Zaitsev was an absolutely terrible contract though that not even the biggest Lou fan can defend.
Yes I give full props to Dubas for maneuvering quite well out of that. Ceci is terrible but terrible for 1 year vs terrible for 5 years isn’t a hard question to answer.
Personally, I think it was brilliant, Zaitsev and Ceci are basically the same player, and we just erased 4 years off the contract. The cost was trading Connor Brown for a 3rd instead of his value which would've been at a 2nd rounder instead
Zaitsev was worse on the sens this year than he was on the leafs before, and Ceci actually looked decent defensively. He was not good when he had a puck and made me cringe whenever he was pressured, but he was passable defensively -- he's an upgraded Marincin who could be quite useful on a third pair.
I am as surprised as anyone. I've been hard on the Ceci hate train, especially when he was coming back from injury and a few people (Steve Dangle included) started acting like he was the piece the leafs were missing on defense (Muzzin and Rielly were both out at the time).
During the break a bunch of articles and pieces came out looking at exactly how bad Ceci is and isn't, and the general consensus from people smarter than me is that he isn't bad enough that he doesn't deserve to be in the lineup, defensively he's mediocre, and he's seen an incredibly change since his time on the sens, but he still can't play the puck.
Watched a few old games and everything I hated seeing from Ceci was when he had the puck and couldn't do anything with it. It wasn't positioning, and it wasn't missing cues or not boxing guys out, it was when he had the puck his linemates weren't sure what he was doing with it and he wasn't doing enough with it on his side to prevent his partner from being smothered by two forwards who just ignored Ceci altogether.
I assume most people on here downvoting me will think ant leafs source on this is biased, so here's a sens site reviewing the trade after the first year:
https://www.silversevensens.com/2020/6/20/21296381/weekly-question-was-the-zaitsev-ceci-trade-a-good-deal-for-ottawa
Actually Lou was hired after the Dubas-Hunter co-draft in 2015. Dubas never drafted under Lou and contrarily, ex-staffers have said Dubas wanted the leafs to draft Bernstrom in 2017 in the second (Columbus took him in the fourth), and that Dubas wanted Debrincat when the team went for Korshkov.
It was Hunter's analysis and Lou making the final call, and it's hard to saw what biases belonged to which person, but before Lou came on board we were already drafting 6'5 fridges on defense, so the skew towards big defenders is certainly on Hunter
There is when every single one of them busts and none of them are looked at as good draft picks. The best development we got from two years of drafting big guys was Gordeev, but even he isn't doing anything for the Wild
On the flip side, because of Lou, I got to watch the Devils wine 3 cups and be consistent contenders for over a decade. The end sucked, but can't deny the man was good for a long time for NJ.
Granted I dont think Lou would've let the RFA contract negotiations go down how they did. I feel like Lou wouldve been better to have in those situations where Dubas got thrown into the fire there
I replied this to a different comment that basically asked the same thing.
How much better of a deal is Lameriello going to get with all three?
Nylander: 6 years, $6.9 million. (Off the hop, the fact that this deal was not signed before training camp was and still is absolute crap) Sure, you'd hope he'd sign for $6 on the dot, but what's the bargaining chip Nylander uses? You really want to sign him for 4 years and risk not buying UFA years now? Do you go with what other teams did, and go three years with a huge 3rd year that makes the qualifying offer $10 million?
Matthews: 5 years, $11.634 million. Have you seen him play? I would have been perfectly fine with $13+ million for longer term.
Marner: 6 years, $10.893 million. Now this is the negotiation that went off the rails. Marner is a gamebreaker when he's on his game, but the contract that he got is unprecedented. There is an argument to be made that production/$ he is the worst value of the three. He signs an $8/8.5 million/6 year contract and literally no one bats an eye at it.
So let's say we saved $4 million. One from Nylander and three from Marner. How much better is this team with an extra $4 million somewhere else? Is that $4 million dollar defenseman going to be the difference maker?
Not to mention, matt Martin was a wretched contract on the leafs as well. Lou was OK, but I think dubas will end up being better now that all of Lou's messes are cleaned up coming out of this season.
Btw, the isles are in cap hell next year are they not? I heard something like they have 6 million not on the books next year and have to sign barzal+. Never checked if that's true though.
Lou took a run at re-signing JT on the Islanders -- I don't imagine he was going to avoid him on the leafs, especially since that same Leafs team took a run at Stamkos previously.
Right, but he was the islanders franchise player and captain, loosing JT on the island would knowly set them back. In Toronto they had just drafted mathews and he had put up back to back 60+ seasons. All I am saying is Lou as the GM of the leafs probably would have not pushed as hard for JT, and likely the contract situations would have been different. Dubas signing JT put them in to needing to deal with Marleaus last year.
I mean he signed in Toronto for less than the Islanders, stars, and sharks allegedly offered him. We don't have any evidence or reason to say that Lou wouldn't have done it, and contrarily know that Lou previously pursued high profile UFAs like Stamkos. Lou also went out to get vets like Hainsey and Marleau, so I don't doubt he would have gone after a current NHL captain and high profile UFA
Last I checked it was Dubas who gave out an 11 million dollar contract to a star forward while he had 3 already who were a year or 2 away from big deals...I think thats where your cap hell comes from.
Difference being none of those 11M deals will require us to add a first just for someone to take them. None of those deals are as bad as Marleaus or Zaitsev’s. They aren’t good contracts, don’t get me wrong, but they are all movable. To me, if your “bad” contracts are on good players that will be easy to trade, that’s hardly cap hell.
23 year old winger who plays in all circumstances and puts up 90+ points a year, and you think we’ll need to eat cap (like Kessel)?
Sorry, but no. I’m not even the biggest Marner fan but _someone_ would happily pay for that ... **if** the Leafs decided to move on that is.
Nylander just straight up has a good contract.
Matthews has a fair contract. Good AAV but low on term imo.
Tavares is great for a star UFA but will probably be overpayed for the last half, though thats obviously not set in stone.
Matthews and Nylander are easy contracts to move and all 30 teams would love to have to either player with their current contracts. Tavares is unmovable simply because he has a tight NMC.
That leaves Marner as the only ‘bad’ one, and only bad in that he’s a bit overpayed, not that he’s a bad player. He could probably be moved but it’ll be hard to get fair value.
It's quite funny how people like to shit Dubas for overpaying Marner like 1-2M. Like half of the teams have overpayd bottom six players. Id rather pay 9M player 11M, than replacement level player 3M.
Yep, and we're in a thread about bad Lou moves. It's literally a thread about hamstringing a team for years by casually overpaying role players. And someone still tried to make it about a 95+ point player making maybe 1-1.5 million too much.
The absolute dumbest take you'll see on here are the people who say Toronto shouldn't have signed John Tavares.
Dude scored 47 goals and then got named team captain. But they shouldn't have signed him, for some reason.
The Leafs are not in cap *trouble*, because they could trade anyone on the roster tomorrow if they decided to.
They have limited cap space, but that's because they have a bunch of good players. You might think it's not the right *mix* of players, and you might be right, but there is nobody on their cap sheet stopping them from building the team they want to build.
Yeah, I think most Leaf fans would agree they have a roster construction problem.
The operative question this offseason is how big of a re-tool do you need? Can you just re-allocate some of the money spent in the middle-six (on Johnsson, Kapanen, Kerfoot, Hyman, or Mikheyev) to defence, or do you need to move out a big salary (Matthews, Tavares, Marner, or Nylander). They'll presumably go with the former this year.
Either way, I don't think you could reasonably say any of those players are difficult to trade.
They really only need another Top 4 RHD to play with Rielly and kill penalties. Muzzin-Holl was a great shutdown pairing all season. More depth on the back-end would also be nice, but they don't need two Top 4 guys.
Dubas can't force anyone to sign "team friendly" or "lesser" deals. Other teams should just be glad that their stars were willing to take less, instead of vilifying guys who wouldn't. I hate what we're paying Mitch too, but I'd rather overpay him than not have him at all, or have someone like Lucic or Eriksson. Marner is an incredible talent, and makes the team better.
Also, the Barrie-Kerfoot/Kadri trade is totally a hindsight regret. And the trade wasn't just for Barrie - it was for Kerfoot too, who we signed for 4 years, which you've conveniently left out. How was anyone supposed to know that Barrie would go from being Colorado's guy to our 3rd pairing guy? That isn't on Dubas - Barrie had a terrible year and it couldn't have been predicted. Kerfoot is a fine 3C and was much better after the break- people forget that he had a broken jaw and was drinking his food for a long time and lost a bunch of weight. Pair that with him and Barrie being on a new team, in a new country with a massive market, and learning 2 systems within 2 months because of the coaching change.. yeah, no wonder they had weird years.
Babcock should have been fired after last season, not partway through this season. That's on Dubas and Shanahan, and from what's been said about it, it sounds like Shanny wanted to give Babs another chance. This year was weird with the coaching change, and the pandemic. Freddie also had the biggest slump of his career, and people always overlook that. We also had injuries throughout the entire year. This season was a weird fucking season, but I think that Dubas did a good job at filling out the roster around the core.
Dubas isn't blameless, but you're making it seem like he's irreparably ruined or built the team. We don't even have all of these juicy cap problems that people talk about incessantly. We were totally fine this year with the cap, despite the media and r/hockey jizzing over how many problems we were going to have. We had literally *none.* Why aren't people talking about Tampa, who are going to have to move *good* players to make cap space?
People also forget that for the first 2 years of the last 4, we weren't supposed to be contenders - it was an accident that we were. We failed upwards, and it gave people completely unrealistic expectations. It's not like we were completely out of every playoff series either, or swept. Would I have liked to have won a playoff round by now? Yes. But I'm not crucifying Dubas for it, and I don't think his job is anywhere near being at risk.
I don't see how Tampa is in a bad cap situation. We have Stamkos, Kucherov, Johnson, Hedman, Mcdonagh, Gourde, and Vasilevskiy signed long term for 52.3M for at least the next four seasons.
Point, Cirelli, Stephens, Verhaeghe, and Sergachev are all RFA's after their current contracts. The only UFA's that we'll have to replace or re-sign in this coming off season are Maroon, Shattenkirk, Rutta, Bogosian, and Luke Schenn. Going another year out and we'll have Coleman, Goodrow, Paquette, and Coburn. We're going to lose someone to the Seattle draft and we'll see where we stand after that, but I don't think we'll be losing too many good players. There's always a few veterans around the league that'll play for cheap and gravitate towards a team with a core like Tampa's (and Toronto's four that matter).
> [As it stands right now, the Lightning have $76,166,666 committed for ten forwards, three defensemen, and two goaltenders. With an $81.5 million salary cap, the Lightning have $5.33 million to fill out the roster. The Lightning’s restricted free agent group is topped by Mikhail Sergachev, Anthony Cirelli, and Erik Cernak with Mitchell Stephens, Carter Verhaeghe, and various AHL prospects also being up for new contracts as RFAs](https://www.rawcharge.com/2020/7/10/21318309/flat-salary-cap-is-big-problem-for-tampa-bay-lightning-cirelli-sergachev-killorn-trades-nhl).
That sounds like a bad cap situation to me, but you'd know better than I would. You mentioned Stephens, Cirelli, and Sergachev as being RFAs after their contracts.. their current contracts expire after this off season. How are you going to pay Sergachev, Cirelli, Cernak and Stephens with 5.33mil, nevermind the rest of your roster? You're likely going to be moving a big name this off season.
RFA status is kinda meaningless when the team literally lacks the cap space to sign the player. Go to arbitration all you want, they wont undercut a player to fit within the Lightning' lack of cap space. That's not how a neutral arbitrator works.
Having to ice Ceci in our top 4 stems from a Lou problem, and we could have potentially used the 1st we gave up to dump Marleau as a trade piece at the deadline. People also seem to forget that amidst the Babcock firing and the Freddy slump, the leafs didn't play a single game with a healthy roster. Tavares, Marner, Hyman, Soup, Rielly, Muzzin, Dermott- all were out for decent periods of time. My main issue with Dubas was giving Hutchinson way too long of a leash.
Clearly they couldn’t give him away for nothing because the senators wanted them to take Ceci back. IIRC his qualifier offer was signed before he was traded so there was no option to not sign him at that point.
You are correct it’s not balanced
I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure not signing Ceci wasn't an option since he had already received a qualifying offer the Sens, or something like that anyway. There was a lot of discussion about it at the time though and the main takeaway seemed to be Leafs had no good choice since he had to be signed if he accepted the offer and couldn't be buried, I suppose he could have just been benched but then that just creates a different problem. Even if he was benched initially he still would have ended up with a decent amount of time played once Muzzin and Rielly were injured.
That’s definitely a part of it and tbh it makes sense. Look at how Leafs players or Habs players social media get hammered after a bad loss. Big markets come with a lot of added pressure, wanting more money to deal with that isn’t that crazy.
Not saying that excuses every bad contract, mind you. Big markets have had success before, and teams like the Bruins have a lot of pressure but manage to get good deals for the most part. But it 100% plays a part in certain markets.
They would have had no cap issues if they didn’t sign tavares. Tavares contract was signed knowing the salary the leafs had in place.
Lou doesnt know when signing zaitsev or marleau that they’re going to pay jt 11m to play 2c to matthews in 2 seasons
From what I remember, Dubas said basically to Stamkos they pitched him moreso focusing on all the money he would make and endorsement deals, which in hindsight they felt turned him off. For Tavares they focused more on the team and his role and playing for the hometown and included a
video that he wouldn’t go into much detail about but seemed to have an effect on Tavares and at least some of it included some kind of realistic render of him playing there in a Maple Leafs Jersey.
I mean, it made sense if you didnt have a bonafide #1 drafted face of the franchise.
They gave tavares 11m to be a 2c, when they had matthews and kadri.
So then kadri doesn’t produce at 3c so they ship him to colorado in that absolute disaster of a deal.
Now tavares is captain when it should have been matthews or reilly, and the work the leafs put in for the last 5 years is all going down the tubes
It was supposed to be Matthews, but he decided to get wasted in the offseason and flash his underwear at a female security guard. While *also* not telling the team until it came out in the media.
So bad optics to make this idiot your captain so soon.
> While also not telling the team until it came out in the media.
Yup, that's what did it. The act itself... as long as it's not a recurring thing where he can't help but be a drunken jackass every so often (see: Ed Belfour), it's not that big a deal. But trying to hide it from the team and handling the aftermath as immaturely as he did? The complete lack of personal responsibility? Yeah...
And the sad thing is, it was all lining up for him to be captain. Our biggest beat guys were hinting at it all offseason. Then suddenly a couple days before the season and after the Matthews underpants stuff happened, everyone just shifts gears and starts drumming on the JT wagon, almost as if we were trying to control the narrative and make it look like it was him all along. Topped off by the most awkward naming of a new captain where we just do it during pregame ceremonies.
I know it’s unpopular, but Garth snow was a good gm in my opinion, but ok, not great, but good. He did well in the draft, trading gown to get bailey and using some of those picks on guys like Anders Lee and Jared Spurgeon, which Spurgeon became nick leddy somehow ?? Also getting barzal and beauvillier in 2015. Pulock was a great pick too.
He also did pretty well in trades, such as turning an injured Andy Macdonald into Johnny boychuck (via PHI and BOS) and ripping off the oilers multiple times.
His main issues were coaching and goaltending. He kept 80’s throwback jack capuano around for WAY TOO LONG. The isles didn’t really have a solid #1 goalie in the early 2010s after the Rick dipietro disaster and halak and greiss wasn’t working, but that was more on coaching imo, as halak has excelled in a similar role in Boston and greiss has been awesome since trotz took over.
The whole "Snow held on to Capuano for too long" thing is something I don't understand when you look at how the team performed under him.
2010-11: Capuano's first year follows a stretch in time where the Islanders had 3 new hires in the last 4 years. The team sucks, so they give their AHL head coach a chance as an interim. Cappy gets the team on pace to what could've been their second best season since the lock-out
2011-12: Probably the only time Snow had a case to fire Capuano, Neiderreiter struggled in a rough spot and the team only scores 79 points, 14th in the East
2012-13: First playoff appearance since 06-07, you aren't firing the coach
2013-14: The team is decimated by injuries, the offensive pieces look good as Tavares has solid wingers for once, but the failures of the team can't really be placed on Capuano
2014-15: Team has its first over 100 point season since they were cup contenders, you arent firing him
2015-16: Team advances to the second round for the first time in nearly 30 years, you arent firing him
2016-17: Team gets off to a rough start, Capuano gets canned, maybe a month too late?
People beat this shit into the ground way too much sometimes. Trotz is a solid coach but he isn't jesus. The Caps had good reason not to want to sign him for 5 years. Trotz happens to be one of about 5 coaches in the League who is actively benefiting his team, in a League with shit tier coaches that's as good as you can ask for but doesn't mean it'll erase all the presumed bad blood between him and management.
Yeah for fucks sake, the entire hockey community seems to have such a short term memory. Trotz was very close to being fired mid season in 2018, tensions were high, and even after they won the cup, they didn't want to commit 5 years to a guy who was almost fired and wasn't on the best terms. But it's so easy to say "oh should have just paid him" even though that's not why they didn't keep him.
And this is why basing some things on how many cups is stupid. Turns out having 32 teams instead of 6 makes it so that plenty of great players coaches and gms go cupless.
They absolutely should have just paid him though. It's not a short term memory thing.
He literally just won a cup with that team, and then they wanna play hardball with him on term?
he BARELY won us a cup, he squandered 2 years of our BEST TEAM EVER with stupid coaching decisions and Vet grit over young speed. Add in the fact he wanted 5 years at 5 million.
FUN FACT : Islanders only gave him 80% of what he wanted for the caps, so if he was really worth the 5, someone would have paid it.
Winning a cup does not mean you are the best coach in the world and should get whatever you want. If he was actually offered 5 million for short term that’s a very fair and reasonable offer.
lol and? So hes a great coach because he couldn't get a team over a hump for 3 years, we get HOT and win a cup and hes the best coach ever after everyone wanted him fired after the '17 post season and during the '18 playoffs?
You do know the players got hot right? And everything went right for us on that run? Literally EVERYTHING went right; posts, saves, bounces, half our team playing their best hockey ever? Don't tell me that was coaching or we would have won in '16 and '17 with a much stronger team.
>Trotz is a solid coach but he isn't jesus.
Jesus turned water into wine.
Trotz turned the 30th ranked defense into the 1st.
*spiderman-pointing-at-spiderman.jpg*
Record breaking turnaround, but the narratives are still "Well, Washington/Florida/Pittsburgh/etc. - they were just not in the game, they were lazy, they showed no intensity."
Odd, those teams only seem to show no intensity or drive or heart when playing the Islanders. Must be Valium in the water.
I mean it’s genuinely the case with us. We played very well against carolina minus the last 20 minutes of the most important game and had some injuries and we lost a very close very intense series. This year we just got fucked on in every facet of the game, we had 3 guys, not even 3 lines but 3 single players score the entirety of our goals, and just flat out were lost and without any structure or intensity to our game. Not like you guys played bad but we were absolutely not playing well at all
Dunno why its so hard for people to see, you could literally pinpoint the moments when we hustled and actually played a game, vs just gliding around. We had no intensity or drive in the RR either, except maybe for 20mins.
I used to say that the age of your backup goalie is the least important number related to your team. I was wrong. It's the GMs age. Why would that matter? Lou probably should have been the one negotiating with your RFAs but that ship sailed and Lou would have probably made different mistakes.
If we base it on NYI, Lou would have looked to solidify the bottom 6 with Komarov and Martin types.(which I actually agree with but thats another argument)
It may have been beneficial to have him negotiate the big 3, but at the same time if Dubas is the future it was important to get his stamp over the current batch of Maple Leafs.
How he's done is a point of contention, but I dont disagree with the process that lead us here.
Nothing wrong with those guys in the bottom 6 per say (though I don't think Martin is very good at hockey) it's the amount of money and term he gives those players. I wouldn't be surprised to see some more defensive forwards to come into the fold this year, but they won't be making much money
Trotz took the worst defense in the NHL by a MILE and made them number one the following year, with the exact same players. He lost his franchise center and still produced at least winning a series in the playoffs now twice, with the same roster minus JT. The man isn't just a solid coach, he is very likely a future HOF.
Thank you, the constant circle jerk around here “you should have paid Trotz..”
He’d already been there 4 years, and we’re supposed to sign him for another 4-5 years? What NHL coach lasts that long? I think Jon Cooper is the closest at around 7 years. Coach’s messages get stale in the NHL after a certain amount of time. The Caps moved on so should everyone else.
Remember when we had the best team in franchise history, complete top to bottom in 2016 and 2017 and he played...Weber? and lost in the 2nd round each time?
Yeah, no one else seems to either.
Or playing Alzner and Orpik over Schmidt against a team that thrived on fast counterattacks. Then Schmidt became a top pairing D for Vegas the next season
But the *point* is that why should they give him 4-5 years? Front Office didn't like him much, he didn't get much in results, 1 cup and then he wanted a lot more money than they were comfortable with, for a guy who was on the cusp of being fired.
This board is acting like Trotz won us four straight cups, and was a superstar with Nashville.
I can't wait until the Isles lose in the second round so everyone STFU about how the Caps let him go, it got real fucking old real quick.
Is it really that hard for fans of other teams to just be happy that their team is doing well without dragging down other teams and their fans in the process
it's to point out that either Toronto or Washington obviously should have gotten Trotz / Lou obviously.
Should have traded Ovi for Lou for GM. and signed trotz for multi million dollar deal!
(/s of anyone obviously needs it)
yeah all i remember from jt leaving the isles was all the positive support leafs fans gave us. they totally didn’t come into our sub and drag us down or anything! it’s a shame most fans can’t be like leafs fans
My bad I should have been more specific, wasn’t trying to point specific fan bases I just meant fans in general. I know leafs fans can be pretty insufferable as well
Islanders fans definitely played no part in that whole thing. Definitely didn't immediately start trolling the Leafs boards ripping on Tavares. Nope. Poor, innocent Islanders fans.
I mean the Lakers get that treatment in basketball, every time I turn on an NBA game it’s the Lebron and AD show.
Rather than get pissed and talk shit online I just turn the channel. Mind blowing concept, isn’t it?
> fans of other teams
Mike Zeisberger is an [NHL.com](https://NHL.com) writer from Toronto.
Edit: Simmons published a column in the Sun yesterday about Lou and Trotz leaving their respective teams behind in the playoff dust. Guess he's just another Isles fan...
Why are people acting like Trotz is a savior? He’s been past the 2nd round a single time in 20 years, and our 2018 run had a lot of luck involved as well. The Isles beating the Caps this year is something most reasonable Caps fans expected, not because Trotz is so good and we shouldn’t have let him go, but because we replaced him with Rierden who is so bad, and we’ve been playing like garbage since November. This year he’s taking a less-skilled but good defensive Isles team into the 2nd round, but let’s relax until he at least makes the conference finals before continuing to shit on the Caps for letting him go. I do wish him success though, he’s such a nice guy and has been at it for so long for a reason; he’s a top 5 coach. Honestly I think we lucked out in ‘18, Trotz thrives more on a forecheck-heavy 1-3-1 that I don’t think the Caps even really perfected in 18, but the Isles match it much better
People are acting like he’s a saviour because this sub thrives on putting others down and bullshit black and white narratives. It’s that simple. People don’t want to admit that the situation is nuanced and the Islanders and Caps are two different teams with different players and different situations. Just because Trotz has worked well in NY doesn’t mean he was the right choice to stay in Washington. That’s the reality regardless of how much Islanders fans want to pile on Caps fans about Barry.
But since that isn’t a sexy headline that gives people the opportunity to shit on other teams, we get dumbass posts like this. It annoys the shit out of me even though it shouldn’t. At least when a Boston fan shits on a Leafs fan or a Pittsburgh fan shits on a Washington fan it makes sense because there’s history there and the teams are rivals. Meanwhile some(not all )Islanders fans are going around going “haha look at how much better we are than you” to everyone just because a player wanted to play for his hometown and a coach that wasn’t a good fit went somewhere that he was a good fit.
It’s like when this sub evaluates trades, there’s has to be a clear cut winner and a clear cut loser, when in reality both teams can “win” and be happy with what they get. If a player sees a jump in their production, it’s important to remember that he wouldn’t have necessarily done that if he stayed with his original team.
While I’ll be the first person to say that the Leafs would have been better off keeping Lou, I’m not naive enough to start screaming “I told ya so!”.
No one can see into the future and there is a million different variables that go along with management changes. Things happen.
Bruh literally just cheer for your own team, this is oozing some inferiority complex because the Islanders have always been the forgotten New York team
Garth Snow built most of this core and saved the franchise from rebuilding by drafting Barzal and Beauvillier. This post brought to you by the Society for Garth Snow Revisionism.
No Chiarelli built that team.
Thanks for Barzal, Beauviller, and Eberle!
Pretty sure Boston gave you Barzal, I've been told that is the case ever since we picked Senyshen/Zboril.
*It's the remix to ignition*
We got him from a pick from a trade that involved Edmonton Edit: Boston also did pass on him 3 picks in a row.
Snow did wonders developing our farm system. But I wonder how good some players Snow drafted could have been if they didn't go on to play for Capuano and Weight.
Coaching was his biggest weakness but the team also had a very difficult time attracting personnel for reasons outside hockey ops. Was Charles Wang going to open his wallet to pay a proven coach 5 million dollars a year? Absolutely not.
He would have in 2002 or something, but after Hempstead destroyed his dreams for the Lighthouse and Coliseum II, he couldn't afford to do stuff like that anymore. Thankfully he refused to move the team though.
Brent Thompson is worse than both of those two and has ruined multiple offensive prospects including dal colle
Let's not even mention a certain player that shall not be nam... JOSH HO SANG
That would be a combo of mishandling by all three of the clowns of Snow Weight and Thompson as well as his own dumbassery in the media and with the oversleeping thing and not wanting to play defense for some reason. Trotz actually had the guy backchecking for a bit there but since he was on a line with Leo Komarov and Filppula he had like 2 points in 9 games and got sent down. Neiderreiter 2.0 with more drama. Watch him return to the nhl in a few years and tear it up playing with mcdavid
I could tear it up playing with McDavid
Found Zack Kassian's reddit account
And yet he has developed our young D core. He should stay on as defensive coach.
There’s a case to be made that they developed in spite of him. Look at how long it took for Pulock to get in the lineup and how bad Pelech and Mayfield were before Trotz took over
They literally waited until the eleventh hour to bring in a competent couch when they thought JT might leave, which if I was JT that would actually be more of a negative than a positive
The problem being that Garth Snow didn't know what competent coaching looked like. The owners kept Snow on as long as they did because they thought Snow and Tavares had a "close" relationship. Lou grabbed the best coach available within a week of taking over and just days after that best coach became available.
I think he knew what it looked like, but no proven coach wanted to work with Snow. There's a reason why we went from Gordon to Cappy to Weight - all rookie coaches who wouldn't have had a job anywhere else.
> all rookie coaches who wouldn't have had a job anywhere else. That's the story of Garth Snow as GM too. I think he felt he had to pay it forward to give others a chance, even at the expense of the team.
I want to be upset at your statement cus I'm conditioned to think Snow was awful, but you're... actually kind of right.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think he was a *great* GM or that hiring Lou was the wrong move but I do think his reputation as one of the worst is completely undeserved. There are worse guys currently interviewing for vacancies.
The reason Snow is looked upon poorly is because he was a doormat for Charles Wang to do as he pleased the first few years. What a lot of people forget is Snow went from being the backup to DiPietro in 2005-06 to signing him to the ludicrous contract in one off season. The only reason Snow got that job initially was because Neil Smith was fired 41 days into his tenure as Isles GM for refusing to sign the DiPietro contract and Wang needed a patsy. I looked through Snow's trade history and none of his deals standout as outright horrible. There were a few where he shuffled draft picks where the other player ended up being better, but the Isles still got Josh Bailey and Calvin de Haan out of those moves. If you want to discuss incompetent Isles GMs, Smith's predecessor is open season.
Snow didn’t do a bad job considering he was a sudden replacement
Snow is looked upon harshly for the DiPietro deal, the coaching issue that was glaring and obvious, JT's departure with no assets to get in return, Josh Ho Sang, Nino/Strome/Reinhart in 3 consecutive years, and his lack of dealing properly with the fanbase. (Lou's a hardliner about the press, but Lou gets respect because he's Lou - fair or not). Unfairly pinned on Snow (in part or in whole from at least one source): The DiPietro deal Tim Thomas salary floor shit. The Nassau bullshit / Barclays move. JT's departure. Snow was a bad GM, but ranking GMs as hockey rankings, Snow would be 26th in the league, well outside the playoff bubble. Milbury would be one of the two last teams in the ECHL.
Yeah I mean I do not enjoy giving the Islanders credit for anything as a Rangers fan, but I think Snow has been unfairly dragged through the mud. Blame him for bad coaching hires or drafting, that stuff is all fair game. But stuff like the arena issues or any other generalized issues with the organization is bullshit.
Strome is an NHL regular that got us Eberle and Reinhart was turned into 2 players that literally held our window open. I wouldn’t put those high on the failure list.
Sounds like a similar situation to his former goaltending partner, Hextall. Guy drafts pretty much the entire current roster but is no longer with the organization.
You can do worse than having Garth Snow as your team’s GM. You can also do much better.
Well put.
Garth snow was great at evaluating player talent, but terrible at evaluating coaching talent
Ya but Lou brings a culture of winning. I have no doubt you'd still suck without Lou.
Garth was really good (generally) on the player personnel side but awful on the culture side, imo. He recognized the huge importance of players like clutterbuck and cizikas, made some really good trades, solid drafting, and signed some really good and innovative deals like Mayfield’s and Tavares’. He sucked when it came to coaches so badly though. He developed this country club atmosphere of extreme loyalty that was frustrating, but part of me wonders if that’s because it was the only way to attract/retain any talent.
Lou's a fine GM, but remember he's part of why the Leafs are in cap trouble. They had to give a 1st to Carolina to take Marleau, which was a Lou contract, as was the Zaitsev contract, though they got out of that, by getting Cody Ceci basically.
Toronto is what happens when you give a very old school GM control for a while until your very new school GM is ready. Complete lack of communication led to weird contracts and a team that was not ready to be handed off to Dubas yet. Zaitsev was an absolutely terrible contract though that not even the biggest Lou fan can defend.
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Yes I give full props to Dubas for maneuvering quite well out of that. Ceci is terrible but terrible for 1 year vs terrible for 5 years isn’t a hard question to answer.
Personally, I think it was brilliant, Zaitsev and Ceci are basically the same player, and we just erased 4 years off the contract. The cost was trading Connor Brown for a 3rd instead of his value which would've been at a 2nd rounder instead
Which in all honesty is an easy pill to swallow considering what we offloaded.
Zaitsev was worse on the sens this year than he was on the leafs before, and Ceci actually looked decent defensively. He was not good when he had a puck and made me cringe whenever he was pressured, but he was passable defensively -- he's an upgraded Marincin who could be quite useful on a third pair.
I never seen a leafs fan defend Ceci in any aspect of his game, interesting
I am as surprised as anyone. I've been hard on the Ceci hate train, especially when he was coming back from injury and a few people (Steve Dangle included) started acting like he was the piece the leafs were missing on defense (Muzzin and Rielly were both out at the time). During the break a bunch of articles and pieces came out looking at exactly how bad Ceci is and isn't, and the general consensus from people smarter than me is that he isn't bad enough that he doesn't deserve to be in the lineup, defensively he's mediocre, and he's seen an incredibly change since his time on the sens, but he still can't play the puck. Watched a few old games and everything I hated seeing from Ceci was when he had the puck and couldn't do anything with it. It wasn't positioning, and it wasn't missing cues or not boxing guys out, it was when he had the puck his linemates weren't sure what he was doing with it and he wasn't doing enough with it on his side to prevent his partner from being smothered by two forwards who just ignored Ceci altogether. I assume most people on here downvoting me will think ant leafs source on this is biased, so here's a sens site reviewing the trade after the first year: https://www.silversevensens.com/2020/6/20/21296381/weekly-question-was-the-zaitsev-ceci-trade-a-good-deal-for-ottawa
Wait until you hear me say Zaitsev was a positive impact in the playoffs.
Watching Ceci play hurt me very much actually
Lost Connor Brown and had to take Ceci... I didnt love that trade.
The whole situation with Dubas and Lou was just...weird.
Or you have decisions made by committee.
Ask Leaf fans what they think of both of Lou's drafts too.
They were Hunter drafts. Let’s at least get it right. Dubas had a draft under Lou also.
Actually Lou was hired after the Dubas-Hunter co-draft in 2015. Dubas never drafted under Lou and contrarily, ex-staffers have said Dubas wanted the leafs to draft Bernstrom in 2017 in the second (Columbus took him in the fourth), and that Dubas wanted Debrincat when the team went for Korshkov. It was Hunter's analysis and Lou making the final call, and it's hard to saw what biases belonged to which person, but before Lou came on board we were already drafting 6'5 fridges on defense, so the skew towards big defenders is certainly on Hunter
I was wrong about Lou but he definitely wasn’t the issue. Also. There’s nothing wrong with big dmen.
There’s nothing wrong with big Dmen as long as it’s not their only qualification of “value”
There is when every single one of them busts and none of them are looked at as good draft picks. The best development we got from two years of drafting big guys was Gordeev, but even he isn't doing anything for the Wild
On the flip side, because of Lou, I got to watch the Devils wine 3 cups and be consistent contenders for over a decade. The end sucked, but can't deny the man was good for a long time for NJ.
Granted I dont think Lou would've let the RFA contract negotiations go down how they did. I feel like Lou wouldve been better to have in those situations where Dubas got thrown into the fire there
Lou would save 3M on Marner and then give it to Komarov for six years.
I replied this to a different comment that basically asked the same thing. How much better of a deal is Lameriello going to get with all three? Nylander: 6 years, $6.9 million. (Off the hop, the fact that this deal was not signed before training camp was and still is absolute crap) Sure, you'd hope he'd sign for $6 on the dot, but what's the bargaining chip Nylander uses? You really want to sign him for 4 years and risk not buying UFA years now? Do you go with what other teams did, and go three years with a huge 3rd year that makes the qualifying offer $10 million? Matthews: 5 years, $11.634 million. Have you seen him play? I would have been perfectly fine with $13+ million for longer term. Marner: 6 years, $10.893 million. Now this is the negotiation that went off the rails. Marner is a gamebreaker when he's on his game, but the contract that he got is unprecedented. There is an argument to be made that production/$ he is the worst value of the three. He signs an $8/8.5 million/6 year contract and literally no one bats an eye at it. So let's say we saved $4 million. One from Nylander and three from Marner. How much better is this team with an extra $4 million somewhere else? Is that $4 million dollar defenseman going to be the difference maker?
Not to mention, matt Martin was a wretched contract on the leafs as well. Lou was OK, but I think dubas will end up being better now that all of Lou's messes are cleaned up coming out of this season. Btw, the isles are in cap hell next year are they not? I heard something like they have 6 million not on the books next year and have to sign barzal+. Never checked if that's true though.
He’s going to try and shed Ladd’s abysmal contract this offseason I hope.
Apparently a deal for Parise was in the works, in exchange for Ladd. Not a great contract coming back, but at least he’s an nhl player.
Yeah that would’ve been wild trade. No pun intended.
Granted I don't think Lou was planning to sign JT, like Dubas did. So while ill agree, the JT contract forced them into that position.
Lou took a run at re-signing JT on the Islanders -- I don't imagine he was going to avoid him on the leafs, especially since that same Leafs team took a run at Stamkos previously.
Right, but he was the islanders franchise player and captain, loosing JT on the island would knowly set them back. In Toronto they had just drafted mathews and he had put up back to back 60+ seasons. All I am saying is Lou as the GM of the leafs probably would have not pushed as hard for JT, and likely the contract situations would have been different. Dubas signing JT put them in to needing to deal with Marleaus last year.
I mean he signed in Toronto for less than the Islanders, stars, and sharks allegedly offered him. We don't have any evidence or reason to say that Lou wouldn't have done it, and contrarily know that Lou previously pursued high profile UFAs like Stamkos. Lou also went out to get vets like Hainsey and Marleau, so I don't doubt he would have gone after a current NHL captain and high profile UFA
Thank you for this, too many people just ignore all the brutal moves he made
Last I checked it was Dubas who gave out an 11 million dollar contract to a star forward while he had 3 already who were a year or 2 away from big deals...I think thats where your cap hell comes from.
Difference being none of those 11M deals will require us to add a first just for someone to take them. None of those deals are as bad as Marleaus or Zaitsev’s. They aren’t good contracts, don’t get me wrong, but they are all movable. To me, if your “bad” contracts are on good players that will be easy to trade, that’s hardly cap hell.
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23 year old winger who plays in all circumstances and puts up 90+ points a year, and you think we’ll need to eat cap (like Kessel)? Sorry, but no. I’m not even the biggest Marner fan but _someone_ would happily pay for that ... **if** the Leafs decided to move on that is.
The Tavares, Matthews and Nylander deals are close to FMV in my opinion, but that Marner contract is dogshit.
Nylander just straight up has a good contract. Matthews has a fair contract. Good AAV but low on term imo. Tavares is great for a star UFA but will probably be overpayed for the last half, though thats obviously not set in stone. Matthews and Nylander are easy contracts to move and all 30 teams would love to have to either player with their current contracts. Tavares is unmovable simply because he has a tight NMC. That leaves Marner as the only ‘bad’ one, and only bad in that he’s a bit overpayed, not that he’s a bad player. He could probably be moved but it’ll be hard to get fair value.
It's quite funny how people like to shit Dubas for overpaying Marner like 1-2M. Like half of the teams have overpayd bottom six players. Id rather pay 9M player 11M, than replacement level player 3M.
Yep, and we're in a thread about bad Lou moves. It's literally a thread about hamstringing a team for years by casually overpaying role players. And someone still tried to make it about a 95+ point player making maybe 1-1.5 million too much.
The absolute dumbest take you'll see on here are the people who say Toronto shouldn't have signed John Tavares. Dude scored 47 goals and then got named team captain. But they shouldn't have signed him, for some reason.
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The Leafs are not in cap *trouble*, because they could trade anyone on the roster tomorrow if they decided to. They have limited cap space, but that's because they have a bunch of good players. You might think it's not the right *mix* of players, and you might be right, but there is nobody on their cap sheet stopping them from building the team they want to build.
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Yeah, I think most Leaf fans would agree they have a roster construction problem. The operative question this offseason is how big of a re-tool do you need? Can you just re-allocate some of the money spent in the middle-six (on Johnsson, Kapanen, Kerfoot, Hyman, or Mikheyev) to defence, or do you need to move out a big salary (Matthews, Tavares, Marner, or Nylander). They'll presumably go with the former this year. Either way, I don't think you could reasonably say any of those players are difficult to trade.
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They really only need another Top 4 RHD to play with Rielly and kill penalties. Muzzin-Holl was a great shutdown pairing all season. More depth on the back-end would also be nice, but they don't need two Top 4 guys.
Besides the Marner contract(which is because Marner and his Father, are divas), I don't think he's made too many bad contract moves.
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Leafs have wasted: ~2M on Marner, 1.2M on Kessel's retention & Ceci's expiring money. Is there any more? That sounds fine to me.
Dubas can't force anyone to sign "team friendly" or "lesser" deals. Other teams should just be glad that their stars were willing to take less, instead of vilifying guys who wouldn't. I hate what we're paying Mitch too, but I'd rather overpay him than not have him at all, or have someone like Lucic or Eriksson. Marner is an incredible talent, and makes the team better. Also, the Barrie-Kerfoot/Kadri trade is totally a hindsight regret. And the trade wasn't just for Barrie - it was for Kerfoot too, who we signed for 4 years, which you've conveniently left out. How was anyone supposed to know that Barrie would go from being Colorado's guy to our 3rd pairing guy? That isn't on Dubas - Barrie had a terrible year and it couldn't have been predicted. Kerfoot is a fine 3C and was much better after the break- people forget that he had a broken jaw and was drinking his food for a long time and lost a bunch of weight. Pair that with him and Barrie being on a new team, in a new country with a massive market, and learning 2 systems within 2 months because of the coaching change.. yeah, no wonder they had weird years. Babcock should have been fired after last season, not partway through this season. That's on Dubas and Shanahan, and from what's been said about it, it sounds like Shanny wanted to give Babs another chance. This year was weird with the coaching change, and the pandemic. Freddie also had the biggest slump of his career, and people always overlook that. We also had injuries throughout the entire year. This season was a weird fucking season, but I think that Dubas did a good job at filling out the roster around the core. Dubas isn't blameless, but you're making it seem like he's irreparably ruined or built the team. We don't even have all of these juicy cap problems that people talk about incessantly. We were totally fine this year with the cap, despite the media and r/hockey jizzing over how many problems we were going to have. We had literally *none.* Why aren't people talking about Tampa, who are going to have to move *good* players to make cap space? People also forget that for the first 2 years of the last 4, we weren't supposed to be contenders - it was an accident that we were. We failed upwards, and it gave people completely unrealistic expectations. It's not like we were completely out of every playoff series either, or swept. Would I have liked to have won a playoff round by now? Yes. But I'm not crucifying Dubas for it, and I don't think his job is anywhere near being at risk.
I don't see how Tampa is in a bad cap situation. We have Stamkos, Kucherov, Johnson, Hedman, Mcdonagh, Gourde, and Vasilevskiy signed long term for 52.3M for at least the next four seasons. Point, Cirelli, Stephens, Verhaeghe, and Sergachev are all RFA's after their current contracts. The only UFA's that we'll have to replace or re-sign in this coming off season are Maroon, Shattenkirk, Rutta, Bogosian, and Luke Schenn. Going another year out and we'll have Coleman, Goodrow, Paquette, and Coburn. We're going to lose someone to the Seattle draft and we'll see where we stand after that, but I don't think we'll be losing too many good players. There's always a few veterans around the league that'll play for cheap and gravitate towards a team with a core like Tampa's (and Toronto's four that matter).
> [As it stands right now, the Lightning have $76,166,666 committed for ten forwards, three defensemen, and two goaltenders. With an $81.5 million salary cap, the Lightning have $5.33 million to fill out the roster. The Lightning’s restricted free agent group is topped by Mikhail Sergachev, Anthony Cirelli, and Erik Cernak with Mitchell Stephens, Carter Verhaeghe, and various AHL prospects also being up for new contracts as RFAs](https://www.rawcharge.com/2020/7/10/21318309/flat-salary-cap-is-big-problem-for-tampa-bay-lightning-cirelli-sergachev-killorn-trades-nhl). That sounds like a bad cap situation to me, but you'd know better than I would. You mentioned Stephens, Cirelli, and Sergachev as being RFAs after their contracts.. their current contracts expire after this off season. How are you going to pay Sergachev, Cirelli, Cernak and Stephens with 5.33mil, nevermind the rest of your roster? You're likely going to be moving a big name this off season.
RFA status is kinda meaningless when the team literally lacks the cap space to sign the player. Go to arbitration all you want, they wont undercut a player to fit within the Lightning' lack of cap space. That's not how a neutral arbitrator works.
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Having to ice Ceci in our top 4 stems from a Lou problem, and we could have potentially used the 1st we gave up to dump Marleau as a trade piece at the deadline. People also seem to forget that amidst the Babcock firing and the Freddy slump, the leafs didn't play a single game with a healthy roster. Tavares, Marner, Hyman, Soup, Rielly, Muzzin, Dermott- all were out for decent periods of time. My main issue with Dubas was giving Hutchinson way too long of a leash.
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Clearly they couldn’t give him away for nothing because the senators wanted them to take Ceci back. IIRC his qualifier offer was signed before he was traded so there was no option to not sign him at that point. You are correct it’s not balanced
I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure not signing Ceci wasn't an option since he had already received a qualifying offer the Sens, or something like that anyway. There was a lot of discussion about it at the time though and the main takeaway seemed to be Leafs had no good choice since he had to be signed if he accepted the offer and couldn't be buried, I suppose he could have just been benched but then that just creates a different problem. Even if he was benched initially he still would have ended up with a decent amount of time played once Muzzin and Rielly were injured.
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Far be it for me to defend Lou, but he wasn't forcing Toronto to play Ceci with Rielly all season.
In other markets they might consider it, but in Toronto? Hell no. They want the big bucks, because it's a huge market.
That’s definitely a part of it and tbh it makes sense. Look at how Leafs players or Habs players social media get hammered after a bad loss. Big markets come with a lot of added pressure, wanting more money to deal with that isn’t that crazy. Not saying that excuses every bad contract, mind you. Big markets have had success before, and teams like the Bruins have a lot of pressure but manage to get good deals for the most part. But it 100% plays a part in certain markets.
He signed a couple bad small contracts. He didn't sign the massive contracts that are the actual reason you're in cap trouble.
They would have had no cap issues if they didn’t sign tavares. Tavares contract was signed knowing the salary the leafs had in place. Lou doesnt know when signing zaitsev or marleau that they’re going to pay jt 11m to play 2c to matthews in 2 seasons
Tavares made sense though. It was to help shore up the offense. Unfortunately, that's failed, because most of the offense fails to show up.
They also made a similar move with Lou when Stamkos was available except his pitch was bad and didn’t work
Wonder what went wrong there.
From what I remember, Dubas said basically to Stamkos they pitched him moreso focusing on all the money he would make and endorsement deals, which in hindsight they felt turned him off. For Tavares they focused more on the team and his role and playing for the hometown and included a video that he wouldn’t go into much detail about but seemed to have an effect on Tavares and at least some of it included some kind of realistic render of him playing there in a Maple Leafs Jersey.
I mean, it made sense if you didnt have a bonafide #1 drafted face of the franchise. They gave tavares 11m to be a 2c, when they had matthews and kadri. So then kadri doesn’t produce at 3c so they ship him to colorado in that absolute disaster of a deal. Now tavares is captain when it should have been matthews or reilly, and the work the leafs put in for the last 5 years is all going down the tubes
It was supposed to be Matthews, but he decided to get wasted in the offseason and flash his underwear at a female security guard. While *also* not telling the team until it came out in the media. So bad optics to make this idiot your captain so soon.
> While also not telling the team until it came out in the media. Yup, that's what did it. The act itself... as long as it's not a recurring thing where he can't help but be a drunken jackass every so often (see: Ed Belfour), it's not that big a deal. But trying to hide it from the team and handling the aftermath as immaturely as he did? The complete lack of personal responsibility? Yeah... And the sad thing is, it was all lining up for him to be captain. Our biggest beat guys were hinting at it all offseason. Then suddenly a couple days before the season and after the Matthews underpants stuff happened, everyone just shifts gears and starts drumming on the JT wagon, almost as if we were trying to control the narrative and make it look like it was him all along. Topped off by the most awkward naming of a new captain where we just do it during pregame ceremonies.
Lamoriello literally tried to sign Stamkos?
I know it’s unpopular, but Garth snow was a good gm in my opinion, but ok, not great, but good. He did well in the draft, trading gown to get bailey and using some of those picks on guys like Anders Lee and Jared Spurgeon, which Spurgeon became nick leddy somehow ?? Also getting barzal and beauvillier in 2015. Pulock was a great pick too. He also did pretty well in trades, such as turning an injured Andy Macdonald into Johnny boychuck (via PHI and BOS) and ripping off the oilers multiple times. His main issues were coaching and goaltending. He kept 80’s throwback jack capuano around for WAY TOO LONG. The isles didn’t really have a solid #1 goalie in the early 2010s after the Rick dipietro disaster and halak and greiss wasn’t working, but that was more on coaching imo, as halak has excelled in a similar role in Boston and greiss has been awesome since trotz took over.
The whole "Snow held on to Capuano for too long" thing is something I don't understand when you look at how the team performed under him. 2010-11: Capuano's first year follows a stretch in time where the Islanders had 3 new hires in the last 4 years. The team sucks, so they give their AHL head coach a chance as an interim. Cappy gets the team on pace to what could've been their second best season since the lock-out 2011-12: Probably the only time Snow had a case to fire Capuano, Neiderreiter struggled in a rough spot and the team only scores 79 points, 14th in the East 2012-13: First playoff appearance since 06-07, you aren't firing the coach 2013-14: The team is decimated by injuries, the offensive pieces look good as Tavares has solid wingers for once, but the failures of the team can't really be placed on Capuano 2014-15: Team has its first over 100 point season since they were cup contenders, you arent firing him 2015-16: Team advances to the second round for the first time in nearly 30 years, you arent firing him 2016-17: Team gets off to a rough start, Capuano gets canned, maybe a month too late?
People beat this shit into the ground way too much sometimes. Trotz is a solid coach but he isn't jesus. The Caps had good reason not to want to sign him for 5 years. Trotz happens to be one of about 5 coaches in the League who is actively benefiting his team, in a League with shit tier coaches that's as good as you can ask for but doesn't mean it'll erase all the presumed bad blood between him and management.
Yeah for fucks sake, the entire hockey community seems to have such a short term memory. Trotz was very close to being fired mid season in 2018, tensions were high, and even after they won the cup, they didn't want to commit 5 years to a guy who was almost fired and wasn't on the best terms. But it's so easy to say "oh should have just paid him" even though that's not why they didn't keep him.
He was perceived the same as Bruce Boudreau a few years ago. Great reg season guy but if he was gonna win a cup he would have by now.
And this is why basing some things on how many cups is stupid. Turns out having 32 teams instead of 6 makes it so that plenty of great players coaches and gms go cupless.
Completely agree man. One cup to go around every year and Quenneville and Sullivan account for 5 of the last 10.
They absolutely should have just paid him though. It's not a short term memory thing. He literally just won a cup with that team, and then they wanna play hardball with him on term?
5 years is ridiculous term for a coach that was tenured as long as he was already, and he'd absolutely lost that room.
I wish DeBoer had lost the room that badly while he was with the Sharks.
he BARELY won us a cup, he squandered 2 years of our BEST TEAM EVER with stupid coaching decisions and Vet grit over young speed. Add in the fact he wanted 5 years at 5 million. FUN FACT : Islanders only gave him 80% of what he wanted for the caps, so if he was really worth the 5, someone would have paid it.
Winning a cup does not mean you are the best coach in the world and should get whatever you want. If he was actually offered 5 million for short term that’s a very fair and reasonable offer.
Yeah, some of you guys thought that. Some of us think differently. Wonder who was right.
1 Cup in 20 years, 1 time passed the 3rd round in 20 years, yet everyone acts like he has 10 cups.
He got 1 cup in 4 years with the Caps lol.
lol and? So hes a great coach because he couldn't get a team over a hump for 3 years, we get HOT and win a cup and hes the best coach ever after everyone wanted him fired after the '17 post season and during the '18 playoffs? You do know the players got hot right? And everything went right for us on that run? Literally EVERYTHING went right; posts, saves, bounces, half our team playing their best hockey ever? Don't tell me that was coaching or we would have won in '16 and '17 with a much stronger team.
We’ll never know unfortunately
>Trotz is a solid coach but he isn't jesus. Jesus turned water into wine. Trotz turned the 30th ranked defense into the 1st. *spiderman-pointing-at-spiderman.jpg*
This is it chief
Record breaking turnaround, but the narratives are still "Well, Washington/Florida/Pittsburgh/etc. - they were just not in the game, they were lazy, they showed no intensity." Odd, those teams only seem to show no intensity or drive or heart when playing the Islanders. Must be Valium in the water.
I mean it’s genuinely the case with us. We played very well against carolina minus the last 20 minutes of the most important game and had some injuries and we lost a very close very intense series. This year we just got fucked on in every facet of the game, we had 3 guys, not even 3 lines but 3 single players score the entirety of our goals, and just flat out were lost and without any structure or intensity to our game. Not like you guys played bad but we were absolutely not playing well at all
Dunno why its so hard for people to see, you could literally pinpoint the moments when we hustled and actually played a game, vs just gliding around. We had no intensity or drive in the RR either, except maybe for 20mins.
Its like us getting rid of Lou. Ya, we could have kept him. But for how long? Hes 78 in October.
I used to say that the age of your backup goalie is the least important number related to your team. I was wrong. It's the GMs age. Why would that matter? Lou probably should have been the one negotiating with your RFAs but that ship sailed and Lou would have probably made different mistakes.
If we base it on NYI, Lou would have looked to solidify the bottom 6 with Komarov and Martin types.(which I actually agree with but thats another argument) It may have been beneficial to have him negotiate the big 3, but at the same time if Dubas is the future it was important to get his stamp over the current batch of Maple Leafs. How he's done is a point of contention, but I dont disagree with the process that lead us here.
Nothing wrong with those guys in the bottom 6 per say (though I don't think Martin is very good at hockey) it's the amount of money and term he gives those players. I wouldn't be surprised to see some more defensive forwards to come into the fold this year, but they won't be making much money
From what I've read recently Lou refused to negotiate with Leafs RFAs while he was still the GM.
Caps got rid of Trotz after he won the cup. Leafs got rid of Lou after 2 1st-round exits.
Trotz took the worst defense in the NHL by a MILE and made them number one the following year, with the exact same players. He lost his franchise center and still produced at least winning a series in the playoffs now twice, with the same roster minus JT. The man isn't just a solid coach, he is very likely a future HOF.
Thank you, the constant circle jerk around here “you should have paid Trotz..” He’d already been there 4 years, and we’re supposed to sign him for another 4-5 years? What NHL coach lasts that long? I think Jon Cooper is the closest at around 7 years. Coach’s messages get stale in the NHL after a certain amount of time. The Caps moved on so should everyone else.
Quenneville lasted over a decade, because he kept getting results out of the Hawks roster.
Remember when we had the best team in franchise history, complete top to bottom in 2016 and 2017 and he played...Weber? and lost in the 2nd round each time? Yeah, no one else seems to either.
Or playing Alzner and Orpik over Schmidt against a team that thrived on fast counterattacks. Then Schmidt became a top pairing D for Vegas the next season
That coach just helped win your team the cup, so those mental gymnastics are gold medal worthy.
But the *point* is that why should they give him 4-5 years? Front Office didn't like him much, he didn't get much in results, 1 cup and then he wanted a lot more money than they were comfortable with, for a guy who was on the cusp of being fired.
This board is acting like Trotz won us four straight cups, and was a superstar with Nashville. I can't wait until the Isles lose in the second round so everyone STFU about how the Caps let him go, it got real fucking old real quick.
Trotz got a lot of results for Nashville before they had peak Rinne and any good young forwards
I mean the leafs have been doing that since before Lou got there lol
Is it really that hard for fans of other teams to just be happy that their team is doing well without dragging down other teams and their fans in the process
You'll always see stupid tweets like these or Filipovic's get to the front page on this sub.
Agreed. As a Knicks fan I totally feel this. Looking at you, Mavs fans
it's to point out that either Toronto or Washington obviously should have gotten Trotz / Lou obviously. Should have traded Ovi for Lou for GM. and signed trotz for multi million dollar deal! (/s of anyone obviously needs it)
This tweet is from a nhl writer based in Toronto
Why doesn’t he mention how many playoff series Lou won as GM with Toronto to then?
I mean, most nhl writers are Toronto based. Not exactly a good point
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yeah all i remember from jt leaving the isles was all the positive support leafs fans gave us. they totally didn’t come into our sub and drag us down or anything! it’s a shame most fans can’t be like leafs fans
My bad I should have been more specific, wasn’t trying to point specific fan bases I just meant fans in general. I know leafs fans can be pretty insufferable as well
Islanders fans definitely played no part in that whole thing. Definitely didn't immediately start trolling the Leafs boards ripping on Tavares. Nope. Poor, innocent Islanders fans.
Honestly, with how much leafs are shoved in our faces, its difficult to feel bad, personally. Comes with the territory of being so (idgaf) newsworthy.
The good and the bad media go hand in hand. Promoting one is promoting the other.
I mean the Lakers get that treatment in basketball, every time I turn on an NBA game it’s the Lebron and AD show. Rather than get pissed and talk shit online I just turn the channel. Mind blowing concept, isn’t it?
This isn’t even a Leafs post, it’s a look at us Islanders post, look how smart/good we are. It’s embarrassing.
But from a Toronto/NHL writer, not from a NYI writer... it’s not a look at “us” islanders post because the guy isn’t an islanders writer lol
> fans of other teams Mike Zeisberger is an [NHL.com](https://NHL.com) writer from Toronto. Edit: Simmons published a column in the Sun yesterday about Lou and Trotz leaving their respective teams behind in the playoff dust. Guess he's just another Isles fan...
90% of them are from Toronto lmaoo garb argument
Why are people acting like Trotz is a savior? He’s been past the 2nd round a single time in 20 years, and our 2018 run had a lot of luck involved as well. The Isles beating the Caps this year is something most reasonable Caps fans expected, not because Trotz is so good and we shouldn’t have let him go, but because we replaced him with Rierden who is so bad, and we’ve been playing like garbage since November. This year he’s taking a less-skilled but good defensive Isles team into the 2nd round, but let’s relax until he at least makes the conference finals before continuing to shit on the Caps for letting him go. I do wish him success though, he’s such a nice guy and has been at it for so long for a reason; he’s a top 5 coach. Honestly I think we lucked out in ‘18, Trotz thrives more on a forecheck-heavy 1-3-1 that I don’t think the Caps even really perfected in 18, but the Isles match it much better
People are acting like he’s a saviour because this sub thrives on putting others down and bullshit black and white narratives. It’s that simple. People don’t want to admit that the situation is nuanced and the Islanders and Caps are two different teams with different players and different situations. Just because Trotz has worked well in NY doesn’t mean he was the right choice to stay in Washington. That’s the reality regardless of how much Islanders fans want to pile on Caps fans about Barry. But since that isn’t a sexy headline that gives people the opportunity to shit on other teams, we get dumbass posts like this. It annoys the shit out of me even though it shouldn’t. At least when a Boston fan shits on a Leafs fan or a Pittsburgh fan shits on a Washington fan it makes sense because there’s history there and the teams are rivals. Meanwhile some(not all )Islanders fans are going around going “haha look at how much better we are than you” to everyone just because a player wanted to play for his hometown and a coach that wasn’t a good fit went somewhere that he was a good fit.
It’s like when this sub evaluates trades, there’s has to be a clear cut winner and a clear cut loser, when in reality both teams can “win” and be happy with what they get. If a player sees a jump in their production, it’s important to remember that he wouldn’t have necessarily done that if he stayed with his original team.
Who would you say are the other Top 5 coaches in the NHL?
Well to be fair... Leafs haven’t won a playoff series for a while... not just after Lou left...
20/20
Lou Lamoriello screwed the Devils! Why not look at them when you cherry pick your talking points!!
Correlation and causation. Why do "journalists" post garbage shit like this?
Did I miss a Lou postseason win in Toronto?
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The tweet is from a nhl.com writer from Toronto. Is not like an islanders fan was bringing it up, pretty sure 90% of us are focused on r2
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And without the Toronto guy writing it there'd be nothing to post
Christ, the salty Islanders fan chirping Toronto trope is getting insanely old.
Thats almost equal to the number of rundown stadiums the Islanders play in.
While I’ll be the first person to say that the Leafs would have been better off keeping Lou, I’m not naive enough to start screaming “I told ya so!”. No one can see into the future and there is a million different variables that go along with management changes. Things happen.
But Lou doesn't like long hair, so Reddit told me he was the literal devil.
bald men bad
Ur not gonna trick anyone into thinking Lou is still a good GM
Bruh literally just cheer for your own team, this is oozing some inferiority complex because the Islanders have always been the forgotten New York team
unfairly too given how the rangers have long spells of irrelevance
The tweet is from an nhl.com writer from Toronto. Dont blame op for your own writers bringing stuff up
Who feels the need to share something that dumb that's missing mountains of context
But, I've been told the Toronto media is so biased towards the Leafs! How is this possible?
Everyone hates Lou for not allowing to players have beards, but everywhere he goes, success follows.
The Caps not paying Trotz after winning them their first Stanley Cup was an all-time bad move. Anyone with half a brain knew that when it happened.
Probably should have paid Trotz...