Tuesday's FTB: Enough hockey - back to the management meta conversation

Brad Treliving spoke to TSN yesterday at the Board of Governors meeting and managed to say nothing at all:

But the news, if you can call it that, was another podcast with another discussion of how the Leafs should change their management. I get that. You do need a top-level strategy that your GM enacts, and a GM-level player usage strategy that your coach enacts in order to succeed. It's just that I, and the media both, don't really have any idea what the guy up a level at MLSE is really going to do. Wake me up when they hire and/or fire someone.

This is my overall take on the Leafs, based as is tradition on the most recent game:

They beat the Wild while being wildly outshot. Anthony Stolarz was great, the Wild goalie wasn't, and this game says two things. One: if you play a system that actually leads to getting outshot something close to 100 to 50 (iCF in all-situations), even with a much better roster, you will lose most of your games. Two: conversely if you play the way the Leafs have for most of this year (in terms of attention to detail, engagement, etc.), even with a much better system, you will lose most of your games.

By all means start at the top and hire a President who has a vision and enact that down the line, but get on with the job! You can't piss about taking even a couple of weeks to get up to speed. You can't do that stupid thing they did when they hired Brendan Shanahan and farted around going through three GMs until he just gave up. Stop waiting for proof your ideas work. This is just like with goalies, by the time you're sure, it's too late. And just like with goalies, if it starts to go sideways, act!

Don't endlessly leak stuff to the media and play this absurd game of positioning yourselves publicly as if you're the government. Just do a thing!

In other "podcasters talk" news, apparently there is some indication from the Ouija Board that the Leafs won't qualify Matias Maccelli, and the rage is upon the land.

Here's the thing, though, I had this thought myself. First, let's get a real grip on how valuable Maccelli is. He was bad according to everyone, then he was scratched, and since whatever Berube does is wrong, that made him the best player ever, and then when he played, he got some points, so the points analysts came out in support, now he's pretty much perfect.

HockeyViz has him as a very positive impact player because of two things that always make me back off and say, "yeah, sure." His penalty differential and his impact on defence. Forward impact on defence is the weakest thing isolation models report. But nonetheless, he is a real NHL player with no actual offence creation. This means that, while he can made a pass some of the time, now... you all need to sit down... Max Domi is actually better at that part of the job than him.

Now get up again, because that used to be true, but this year's Domi has been a disaster offensively. So this becomes, like every other damn thing, a question of what if the roster and/or the coach is changed. Then what?

Then I think Maccelli is a kind of useful, but not terribly impactful player who is about to play a lot of minutes and has arbitration rights with a juiced AAV to base it on.

Yes, this is very like the Liljegren problem.

Maccelli's Qualifying Offer will be $4.11 million, which is the least he would get in arbitration, and with the TOI he'll put in over the next few games and the points he can potentially finish with, he is going to have a good arbitration case.

So the Leafs can try to sign him for less, potentially by offering term, or they can just walk away.

If you decontextualize this and make it about the skill vs grit (false) dichotomy and see only Maccelli and Max Domi, you can gin up some good anger about that one time Trelliving said, "snot," but I like Maccelli, and I think trading for him was the kind of clever move the Leafs need to be making. They have cap space. They can use that to add players.

I'm not so sure this is the player they want to overpay. Don't fall in love with every clever idea.

As of now, this is all just talk, and QO decisions come in late June. Anything can happen between now and then. Or nothing at all.

Now for some fun. Name this player: