@MLarkinHockey You’re forgetting the part where he turns into Bambi on skates in the playoffs. Cool, he can rack up points when they’re playing glorified pond hockey in the regular season, but when it matters most, he’s a ghost. Why would teams want that? 🤔
Could not be further from the truth. Their top guys disappear come playoff time, because they refuse to deal with physicality. So in essence, it’s 100% on the Core 4. None of them elevate their game when it matters most.
The Leafs aren't losing because of Matthews, Marner and Nylander. They're losing because they aren't properly surrounded. And it's probably time for a new voice and approach behind the bench.
Jon Cooper on the two goals that were, ultimately, not goals for the #Bolts in this game: “I'm going to address this. This is clearly a turning point in the game. If anybody is going to talk about this game, they're going to talk about the goals that were taken away. In this league where goals are at a premium and how all we’ve done is make the rules for more goal scoring, that’s what we've done. Every year, there seems to be something we tweak so more goals can be scored and that's great. There are mandates and the words were, to pull a goal off of the board, it has to be “unbelievably egregious.” That's the standard to the pull a goal off board. Well, the first one is on the board and I couldn't find anything remotely egregious about that. It's really tough. Forsling is holding on, like, it’s a full penalty. He’s holding on to Duclair so he's trying to yank, he's trying to get his balance. It really affects nothing. Bob misses the puck and it's a net front battle and it's in the net. Now, we have to rebound from that. We do. Then, the next one is a net front battle and I will give the goalie credit. He quit on the play. He completely quit, didn't see it, didn't whatever and, then, flailed and there was maybe incidental contact at most. Now, we have to challenge it because they saw the reaction of the goaltender. He duped them and so be it but, now, we have to make that challenge. Again, it's like are net front battles not allowed anymore? That's a part of everybody’s game, the boxing out that goes on there, it’s like prison rules in the playoffs but it's not prison rules for the goalie?”