NHL 2024-2025: Definitely the Leafs year

Penance said:

I watched that game and it scares me how well your guys move around in the offensive zone.

One thing your guys do really well is hold on to the puck and not force plays. They are really good at turning away from a defender to protect the puck and wait for a play to open up. Stark contrast to our guys who are always forcing plays.

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It's part of why we once again are breaking standard prediction models. Pass up a good bit of obvious shot opportunities to try and set up better ones. Really like that Carbs went back to Protas with Ovi and Strome, leaving McMichael with Wilson and PLD. Just balances the top 6 out so much. 4th line with Dowd centering Duhaime and Raddysh is perfect energy line, good work forechecking with some speed that chips in offense more than you'd expect.

The 3rd line with Eller, Mangiapane and Frank currently is our big question area. Eller we traded for early on but I feel like Mangiapane has bounced up and down the lines without getting full utilization of his offensive potential, although he plays a sound game. Frank is AHL all star last couple seasons with blazing speed and a plus shot...just not sure he's really ready for an NHL full time role and it's weird to only break in at 26 or 27 whatever he is currently. Eller has been decent but he's streaky with offense. If we could somehow land a real impact pivot to be the 3C there, while getting Ryan Leonard after college season is over...our forward group could be scary.

Couldn't resist.

Vasy trying his hardest to make this Vezina race to at least be a little interesting. Man has put our team on his head the past couple months and its starting to pay off. Its also nice to see our bottom 6 showing up. Cool stat: when our bottom 6 score we have a 100% WR this season.

15 goals in 2 games after the break seemed to dry up our offense other than Ovechkin.