Leafs Must Continue To Battle

Burtonboy wrote:

Where our goaltending is concerned you might find this article interesting.
http://bitterleaf.blogspot.com/2010/12/clusterf-quick-clusters-of-goals.html

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That’s a great little piece of stats work. I think what it highlights more than Giguere’s decline though, is how the team collapses when Giggy lets in a bad one. They expect him to be there for them, and they deflate when he shits the bed.

@ canucksnaphook:
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It would have to be a really solid month, lol. I’m talking about just future’s, or maybe a bad forward contract that expires this year instead of next. We’ll see. I hate Lebda, but he does have a history of getting better as the year goes on.
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@ Omac13:
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Gunnarsson has still been more effective. You’re only looking at what you want to see. Everyone is enamoured with the guy because he’s fucking enormous and had a couple good games, but he does have work to do. You’re also being completely unfair to Komisarek, who’s made some excellent breakout passes this year. Offensively, both bring more to the table at this point in time. I’d rather Aulie go play 25 minutes per night with the Marlies for a month or so with the knowledge of what he needs to do to be an NHL defender. He will improve quickly, I’m sure.
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By the trade deadline, I’d like one of Komisarek or Beauchemin traded, and our D to look like this:
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Kaberle – Schenn
Phaneuf – Aulie
Gunnarsson – Komi/Beau
(Lebda)
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It seems to me that Aulie will be the perfect compliment to Phaneuf’s run and gun style once he becomes acclimitized to the NHL.

@ paso:
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Chiarelli had very few options when he elected to move Kessel, which (shockingly!) you have decided to omit for the purpose of giving your bogus argument some credit. If you’ll recall, Savard was coming off a career year, while Krejci was willing to sign for peanuts after a 73 point season. The only option to move significant salary was Patrice Bergeron, who had suffered back-to-back concussions leaving many wondering if he’d ever play hockey seriously again. His value at that point, given his 4.75 million dollar price tag, was less than that of John Mitchell. Kessel was really the only option.
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Now, Kessel is one of the very few star player trades where I’m willing to concede there was probably some dressing room issues. I don’t buy it with Phaneuf, as again, the proof is in the testimonies of those who have defended him. Bouwmeester was completely unmoveable after falling off the map in Calgary, and he, Regehr and Sarich had full NMC/NTC’s (funny how you omitted that in your “analysis” of the trade). Phaneuf was quite simply the easiest to move for the greatest return. If you need to answers in regards to Phaneuf’s statistical decline, look no further than DWC’s excellent analysis of the situation. With Kessel, he probably was a dressing room issue. However, all last year, Elliote Friedman and a few others reported that dressing room issues persisted in the Boston dressing room, and that if it couldn’t be sorted out, big changes would come. Ironically, it was Savard’s injury that brought the team together. With him out of the lineup, they are a much better team. Go figure. Looks like Chia and company might have paitned Kessel all wrong given the desperate attempts to move Savard this summer.
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Okay, so I’ve addressed your notion that Phaneuf and Kessel were both tossed away because no one wanted them. We know multiple teams tried to land Kessel with packages that easily could have been better than the one we gave up (unfortuneately we sucked it up big time last year and handed them Seguin, but the deal had the potential to be very favorable for us). I don’t want to miss any of your ridiculous points that make no sense for fear of being accused of being unable to process information. What else is there?
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Oh yes, the pre-cap trades. I actually mentioned cap era trades that you refuse to talk about, and instead pointed to my obviously sarcastic reference to the Gretzky trade. What about Gagne, Sturm, Heatley, Smyth – you know, all the players comparable to Marleau in terms of salary vs performance and the NMC? Of course you won’t answer this, because you don’t have a solution for it except to pretend that I am somehow a Leaf homer for pointing out the reality of those situation. I am a Leaf homer, there’s no doubt, but being so does not effect my ability to rationalize information. There’s a reason that Boston tried to give Savard away. There’s a reason Gagne was had for a bag of pucks. There’s a reason a leader like Smyth was moved for a dismal return. There’s a reason Sturm was given up for futures. As soon as you realize what that reason is, perhaps you’ll understand why if Marleau were made available, the return would be weak.