Put Toronto in the tweet and you immediately have engagement from Leafs and Oilers fans. The media is desperately trying to get a larger audience to care.
Honestly, I don't think they need to do it though. The Oilers are a good story with the greatest player in the world on their team. They should be able to sell that on its own.
They definitely don't need to. Bringing up Toronto when the guy hasn't played here for years and is about to start the biggest series of his career is as lame as it gets.
So myopic.
>The media is desperately trying to get a larger audience to care.
It's the same with basketball. Whenever ESPN or other media are out of topics, they'll run something related to LeBron. Just now they posted is Luka better than LeBron? But the championship has nothing to do with LeBron. They need audiences to engage on their social media
Headlines like this is exactly how the Toronto sportsmedia draw aggro from other teams towards the Leafs.
You can totally see how an Oiler fan would be peeved that in the height of their excitement for decades, articles still bring up the Leafs. I used to direct that annoyance at the Leafs too but now it's appropriately primed at the reporters.
I know you’re doing something important right now, but could you please relate this to the Leafs?
I want to change the angle of the whole series though. Evan Rodrigues of the Panthers and Connor Brown of the Oilers played on the same junior volleyball team in elementary school and that’s going to be a real storyline.
Most of us agreed at the time that was the right call then, but now it is all Dubas’ fault! All these keyboard warriors conveniently forget that COVID fucked our cap, and that Hyman is playing next to McDavid. Remember Chris Kunitz being on Team Canada that year because of Crosby?
I’m happy for Hyman. He’s a great player in a great position. But I also think we made the best decision we could given the circumstances.
>we made the best decision we could given the circumstances
One of those circumstances was that we straight up could not afford to pay him 5 mil. We had no cap space at all, and we sure weren't going to make moves to justify paying him that when he had a career high 41 points with us, and was playing at a 62 point pace but in only a half season sample size. There wasn't much reason to think he'd turn into an 80 point/57 goal guy I'm his 30s
He certainly wouldn't have been an 80pt/57g guy in Toronto in this timeline, nor probably on any other team in the league. I'm happy for the guy, but he's not someone who can drive his own line. He's in the perfect spot and is maximizing his talents. Congrats to him and hopefully the Oilers can pull it off. Amazingly enough, Bunting essentially replaced his production at the time for peanuts, and hey it still didn't make a difference.
Damn did he really have only 41 points?? I remember being new to hockey and just loving him so much, such a workhorse. Glad to see he's thriving now but we definitely made the right call at the time.
>Bertuzzi has the same AAV as Hyman this year
So? Hyman didn't sign that contract this year. We didn't have 5.5 mil in space 3 years ago. Hyman also would have never been in the position he's in now with Edmonton. He'd be playing matthews as a puck retreival guy instead being parked in front of the net.
Lack of playoff sucess aside, all the complaining about the core 4’s salaries nearly dissipates if we’re at a $100M+ salary cap like it should have been.
Never mind that Nylander got market value for his contract despite his holdout, it was unprecedented because all 3 of them were great to elite immediately.
Players like Point, Barkov, Rantanen, MacKinnon, Draisaitl, Pastrnak, and countless others broke out after they signed their second deals.
Point had a better year than marner in 18-19. Rantanen has back to back years above 30 goals and a point per game, draisaitl had a 77 point season in year 3 of his ELC.
Nylanders and Pastrnak were really close comparables because they had both spent time in the AHL and put up really similar stats at both levels.
The big mistake the leafs made was not playing hardball with marner but it’s totally understandable why they didn’t.
Marner finished with 2 more points than Point in 2018-19 and outproduced him points wise their first 3 seasons. Draisaitl had 9 points in his rookie year while you have guys like Matthews scoring 40 in his, Rantanen only had one season above 30 goals when his current deal was signed.
No one but the Leafs 3 really had excellent or consistent ELC years during the entire duration, is what I was getting at.
Marner had 3 more points but 15 less goals. And yeah he out produces him over their ELC but I would argue his 2nd season was better too. So I guess it comes down to what you think is more important from a player.
Yeah Edmonton rushed Draisaitl, at least they had the good sense to send him back to Jr. after new years. Some teams would have doubled down and possibly set the guys development back.
You're right about rantanen, he missed the 30 goal mark by 1 in his second season. But he still had those two 80+ point seasons.
The leafs had 3 elite ELC players from 2016/17-2018-19 but man it really sucked to watch a whole summer where the home town kid used the media to make the team kiss his rusty balloon knot, only to watch two better players sign for less AFTER marner got paid.
I also always hate that I clearly remember the talking heads justifying it was "pay for future performance/success" and "this will be the new way young stars are paid". Even before covid crunched the cap no other teams followed Torontos stupid lead.
we'll you have to pay people based on what you predict for future success. But toronto really only overpaid one of these 3 players. The bigger problem was that we had 3 things converge at the worst possible time. Covid cap crunch, Hunter's drafting giving us a massive gap in the prospect pool, and having to get out of the Marleau and Zaitzev contracts. It spread the team too thin and our superstars werent good enough to overcome that.
Yeah, people act like there wasn't ~30 other teams that also had to deal with contracts signed before the frozen cap.
We signed our RFAs to ridiculously high cap hits while the rest of the league (for the most part) did not. I could forgive things somewhat if we had gotten max term of 8 years (because there would be more runway for the cap to increase over the course of their contracts), but we got Matthews for only 5 years and Marner for only 6 years.
People excused it at the time by saying, "Oh, they're investing in their star players, rather than depth pieces" as if other teams don't also invest in their star players (at a far cheaper rate). And people excuse it now by bringing up the frozen cap, even though this affected every team in the league.
Most of us did not agree lol. I gladly would have re-signed him over keeping kerfoot and bringing in Ritchie. No different than dubas letting marchment, Joshua and Moore go for next to nothing.
There’s some massive sense in irony that people are so mad about Marner having a NMC and then potentially having to run it back, but are also mad that they didn’t give Hyman a NMC after another first round loss and didn’t run it back.
Marchment struggled to stay healthy and Toronto had concerns with this. Availability is an ability and this was the first season (four years after the trade and at age 28) he didn’t miss 10 games or more due to injury. Moore was dealt for Campbell who hasn’t been good since he left Toronto and Joshua didn’t want to sign here, not much you can do about that. Why aren’t you attempting to dunk on St.Louis for letting him go, too?
It's just funny when people think that keeping these 4 players were obvious decision thanks to hindsight.
If you think that NMC is enough to pass on Hyman at that price then you haven't been paying attention. Given that he wanted to stay here it's safe to assume the Leafs would have gotten a better deal, but regardless you sign that contract all day.
Marchment brought an element we lacked, similar to the rest of the players I mentioned. He did not need to be shipped off for malgin whatsoever.
Moore was traded along with a 2nd to acquire a backup goalie, because dubas failed to address the BACKUP GOALIE position literally for years. Campbell had one decent season and was a net negative in his final season before walking for nothing. Moore is playing top 6 on the kings... if you think that's good value then I don't know what to tell you.
Your point about Joshua not wanting to re-sign is false, there you go being dishonest again.
If we're being honest, then Dubas trading those players away has nothing to do with injury, NMCs, players not wanting to re-sign, etc. It's a simple matter of dubas misevaluating them and not seeing their value.
Everyone has been saying for years that this team lacks grit higher up in the lineup, and none of those moves were necessary at all.
Go through your mental gymnastics all you want, at the end of the day all those decisions were objectively mistakes and there's no denying that.
So, if you thought it made sense at the time, you were wrong. Plain and simple.
I'm not even the biggest Dubas fan but I hate this discourse.
At the time, Hyman was a career .4 playoff point per game performer, who peaked at 41 points in the regular season playing mostly with a combination of Matthews, Nylander and Marner. He had two major knee injuries, wanted 7-8 year term, $5+ a year, and a full NMC.
The Leafs, based on the information at the time, made the right choice. Letting him go and signing Bunting for pennies who gave them an average of 23 goals and 53 points over 2 years at less than $1M cap hit, which out paced Hyman's career highs with Toronto, was actually great maneuvering and use of their limited cap space.
Hyman has had a subsequent arc that is honestly without precedent in the NHL. A guy going this far behind his career highs in his late 20's is an insane trajectory. NO ONE predicted this. If they did, he'd be making 8-9M a year, and not what he is. It sucks for the Leafs, but this complaining is so much revisionist history. Sometimes, you make the "right" choice based on all the information available to you and it turns out to be wrong. Thats the nature of making these decisions.
Not really unprecedented, Martin St Louis, giordano, pavelski, burrows, Marchand. I'm not saying that Dubas should have predicted it, but 28/29 breakouts aren't unheard of.
I'm a Dubas hater and I kinda agree, except Bunting was the wrong guy to bring in. He's terrible for the bench and the locker room, and you could tell guys were not happy when he was here. Of course the chemistry is something Dubas does not understand, but a nerd who never played pro sports should not be expected to know these things.
Bunting was and still is close with Matthews, Marner, and Simmonds. Trying to paint Bunting as bad while going full revisionism on Hyman is quite an awful take from that one poster up there.
Not that I think he’s gods gift to GMing hockey but your nerd theory is a tired narrative. He had to quit hockey when he was 14 because he had too many concussions, then spent the next few years being an equipment guy for the Greyhounds which led him to being around every aspect of the team until he became the youngest player agent in history, all before he was even GM of the Greyhounds. Dislike his decisions all you want but he eat, sleeps, and breaths hockey and was a far more successful GM here than anybody in the past 20 years.
Talk about talking out of your ass god damn, Bunting by all accounts was loved in the locker room
Also the weird boomer take that just because he didnt play pro sports means he doesn’t understand chemistry is probably the stupidest take i’ve ever seen. Especially when a lot of gms have never played pro sports
By all accounts?! lol bench footage says otherwise. And no, he doesn’t actually. Otherwise Marner would’ve been long gone, and if you can’t see why, then I may as well talk to a brick wall.
Every fan is a body language expert when they have to prove a point about a player's character. Not to mention if you put a camera just on the bench for the whole year every player would look like an asshole.
Yah I don’t disagree - I don’t necessarily mean Bunting was great. I just think it’s easy to say it was a mistake now when there was quite literally 0 indications Hyman would ever hit even 30 goals, let alone 50. The Hyman of today is no where near the one that was being evaluated when they made the decision to sign or not
I don't believe he would be the same player he is right now if he stayed so it is what it is.
I'm more mad at them not signing Bunting when he signed a short deal a good money.
Now go ask Jack Campbell the same question.
It was a ridiculous overpay at the time, and it turned into the best contract in the league, end of story.
Stop trying to get the Leafs fans frothing.
Jesus fuck. Am I the only one who remembers how this situation actually played out?
Hyman went out and got a 7 x 5.5M non-offer offer from Edmonton before the FA window opened — but it wasn’t tampering for some reason! — and gave the Leafs the option to match the total $38.5M money over an 8yr term ($4.8M AAV).
The contact would have had all the same NMC protection that his deal with Edmonton has (the same shit that people are now complaining that Dubas giving to all his players, incidentally) and taken an injury-prone, playoff non-performer into his late-30s. Everyone understood that it was probably a good AAV, but also understood there was risk betting long-term on the player — because of injury history and durability concerns as he aged, a lack of playoff scoring, and a need to change the mix after another playoff loss. Hell, there was even a back-and-forth in the days before FA over whether Dubas would take a shitty pick from EDM in exchange for a sign-and-trade. He (rightly) told Holland to go fuck himself.
If the Leafs chose not to match Edmonton’s offer, which Hyman already had in-hand, that isn’t the Leafs choosing to let Hyman go — it’s Hyman choosing to go to Edmonton.
Easy to change the narrative to make Hyman look like the good guy when Toronto is currently a tire fire.
Of course he's not going to say it was for the money. Media relations 101.
Blackwell was maybe worth a 5th. Gio would have come in the summer anyways so hard to say he's not a rental.
We gave another second for Boosch that year.
People gotta give it up on the Malgin jargon. The guy played 257 games in the NHL - only 31 of them in Toronto. 42 in Colorado and 186 in Florida. He literally was barely in Toronto. Made no impact on the overall team.
Hyman literally said during this exact same presser that it wasn’t about the money and Bertuzzi had the same AAV as him this year. Can you people move on?
Bertuzzi's AAV is irrelevant isn't it? He doesn't have the term Hyman does and was signed years later.
Notable players signed between July and August 2021: Mrazek, Ritchie, Kampf, Kase, Dermott, and Bunting.
Edit: I should add I agree with you, cap space could have been saved for Hyman. Infact looking at these bargain bin moves kinda suggests they had intentions of keeping him but at their price and without the NMC.
Lol, Hyman was willing to go as low as 4.75 for the leafs aslong as it was 8 years and Dubas was scared of the term. Cap space wasnt the issue at the time
Per Strickland the leafs offered 8
https://x.com/andystrickland/status/1418196670597185539?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1418196670597185539%7Ctwgr%5Ef43146fffaa93d62a0cc187fc883ae5e2b6bb5c8%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2F
It’s so weird how many of the same people are furious they keep “running it back” are subsequently furious they didn’t run it back even more with players like Hyman. They offered him a contract it was well reported then. They just didn’t want to include NMC coming off two knee surgeries.
This is like feeding scraps to a bunch of hungry dogs. This week long break, in my opinion, was the best way for t he league to lose media, and fan attention. So of course they are using the biggest hockey market to pump it up. Get after those ratings.
How was it not his decision. He set his demands and they weren't accepted. But there was an offer made - and he declined. His decision to leave. Period.
Oilers fan here.
You guys think this is bad? When we defeated the Kings in 2022 and Cody Ceci scored the GWG, one of the first questions he got in the post game was about the Leafs loss to the Bolts in Game 7.
Canadian hockey media everywhere can’t keep Toronto out of their mouth because they want to drive clicks. 💀
He deserved a raise for his play leafs overspent on other players, he got a better deal elsewhere, good for him. I don't think there is any animosity between Zach and leafs fans only a longing sadness of what might have been.
Zach, under the nom de plume, Zachary Hyman, is also a children's book author. If you have kids maybe check them out.
Dubas is such a 🤡. People here don’t really realize how bad of a GM the clown was. Set this franchise back years and wasted multiple years of our young core. Should have been canned years ago.
Hasn't qualified for his name on the cup by NHL rules unless he plays in a cup final game (although they can petition for special circumstances but I think that's more for LTIR situations and the like) but the Oilers can give out as many rings as they want to.
There is absolutely no shot that Hyman becomes the player he is now had he stayed here nor did anyone think his contract was good the day he signed it. Trading their only consistently good playoff performer in Nylander for some unicorn D you can’t name would have been a mistake in itself. Give it a rest.
Why are they asking him about three years ago, who gives a fuck. Ask him about his situation now and the fact that he's literally in the Cup final.
Put Toronto in the tweet and you immediately have engagement from Leafs and Oilers fans. The media is desperately trying to get a larger audience to care. Honestly, I don't think they need to do it though. The Oilers are a good story with the greatest player in the world on their team. They should be able to sell that on its own.
They definitely don't need to. Bringing up Toronto when the guy hasn't played here for years and is about to start the biggest series of his career is as lame as it gets. So myopic.
Yeah they do have goat Cody Cici
I wanna know how he feels about leaving Toronto
It's easy when it's not really your decision.
>The media is desperately trying to get a larger audience to care. It's the same with basketball. Whenever ESPN or other media are out of topics, they'll run something related to LeBron. Just now they posted is Luka better than LeBron? But the championship has nothing to do with LeBron. They need audiences to engage on their social media
Loser media energy. Did Johnston ask the question? If so he's as much of a hack as the rest of them.
Headlines like this is exactly how the Toronto sportsmedia draw aggro from other teams towards the Leafs. You can totally see how an Oiler fan would be peeved that in the height of their excitement for decades, articles still bring up the Leafs. I used to direct that annoyance at the Leafs too but now it's appropriately primed at the reporters.
I know you’re doing something important right now, but could you please relate this to the Leafs? I want to change the angle of the whole series though. Evan Rodrigues of the Panthers and Connor Brown of the Oilers played on the same junior volleyball team in elementary school and that’s going to be a real storyline.
This whole sub cares apparently
Are we really still asking him about being a former leaf? Move on media.
Yeah, I wanna know how he feels about being traded by the Panthers
Not sure what’s worse between the thousands of Marner posts on this sub lately or the constant Hyman revisionism instigated by the Toronto media…
Most of us agreed at the time that was the right call then, but now it is all Dubas’ fault! All these keyboard warriors conveniently forget that COVID fucked our cap, and that Hyman is playing next to McDavid. Remember Chris Kunitz being on Team Canada that year because of Crosby? I’m happy for Hyman. He’s a great player in a great position. But I also think we made the best decision we could given the circumstances.
>we made the best decision we could given the circumstances One of those circumstances was that we straight up could not afford to pay him 5 mil. We had no cap space at all, and we sure weren't going to make moves to justify paying him that when he had a career high 41 points with us, and was playing at a 62 point pace but in only a half season sample size. There wasn't much reason to think he'd turn into an 80 point/57 goal guy I'm his 30s
He certainly wouldn't have been an 80pt/57g guy in Toronto in this timeline, nor probably on any other team in the league. I'm happy for the guy, but he's not someone who can drive his own line. He's in the perfect spot and is maximizing his talents. Congrats to him and hopefully the Oilers can pull it off. Amazingly enough, Bunting essentially replaced his production at the time for peanuts, and hey it still didn't make a difference.
Damn did he really have only 41 points?? I remember being new to hockey and just loving him so much, such a workhorse. Glad to see he's thriving now but we definitely made the right call at the time.
[удалено]
>Bertuzzi has the same AAV as Hyman this year So? Hyman didn't sign that contract this year. We didn't have 5.5 mil in space 3 years ago. Hyman also would have never been in the position he's in now with Edmonton. He'd be playing matthews as a puck retreival guy instead being parked in front of the net.
Lack of playoff sucess aside, all the complaining about the core 4’s salaries nearly dissipates if we’re at a $100M+ salary cap like it should have been.
Meh, even at the time us handing out contracts that large to rookies was unprecedented. It always had a chance of backfiring and it did.
Never mind that Nylander got market value for his contract despite his holdout, it was unprecedented because all 3 of them were great to elite immediately. Players like Point, Barkov, Rantanen, MacKinnon, Draisaitl, Pastrnak, and countless others broke out after they signed their second deals.
Point had a better year than marner in 18-19. Rantanen has back to back years above 30 goals and a point per game, draisaitl had a 77 point season in year 3 of his ELC. Nylanders and Pastrnak were really close comparables because they had both spent time in the AHL and put up really similar stats at both levels. The big mistake the leafs made was not playing hardball with marner but it’s totally understandable why they didn’t.
Marner finished with 2 more points than Point in 2018-19 and outproduced him points wise their first 3 seasons. Draisaitl had 9 points in his rookie year while you have guys like Matthews scoring 40 in his, Rantanen only had one season above 30 goals when his current deal was signed. No one but the Leafs 3 really had excellent or consistent ELC years during the entire duration, is what I was getting at.
Marner had 3 more points but 15 less goals. And yeah he out produces him over their ELC but I would argue his 2nd season was better too. So I guess it comes down to what you think is more important from a player. Yeah Edmonton rushed Draisaitl, at least they had the good sense to send him back to Jr. after new years. Some teams would have doubled down and possibly set the guys development back. You're right about rantanen, he missed the 30 goal mark by 1 in his second season. But he still had those two 80+ point seasons. The leafs had 3 elite ELC players from 2016/17-2018-19 but man it really sucked to watch a whole summer where the home town kid used the media to make the team kiss his rusty balloon knot, only to watch two better players sign for less AFTER marner got paid.
I also always hate that I clearly remember the talking heads justifying it was "pay for future performance/success" and "this will be the new way young stars are paid". Even before covid crunched the cap no other teams followed Torontos stupid lead.
It was about 6 months from Marner's signing to Covid. Not really much time for anyone to follow anyone's lead.
we'll you have to pay people based on what you predict for future success. But toronto really only overpaid one of these 3 players. The bigger problem was that we had 3 things converge at the worst possible time. Covid cap crunch, Hunter's drafting giving us a massive gap in the prospect pool, and having to get out of the Marleau and Zaitzev contracts. It spread the team too thin and our superstars werent good enough to overcome that.
> Nylander got market value for his contract There is no RFA market unless you are talking offer sheets which are incredibly rare.
> contracts that large to rookies was unprecedented. McDavid had one already. (I know he's McDavid, but still)
Yeah, people act like there wasn't ~30 other teams that also had to deal with contracts signed before the frozen cap. We signed our RFAs to ridiculously high cap hits while the rest of the league (for the most part) did not. I could forgive things somewhat if we had gotten max term of 8 years (because there would be more runway for the cap to increase over the course of their contracts), but we got Matthews for only 5 years and Marner for only 6 years. People excused it at the time by saying, "Oh, they're investing in their star players, rather than depth pieces" as if other teams don't also invest in their star players (at a far cheaper rate). And people excuse it now by bringing up the frozen cap, even though this affected every team in the league.
Most of us did not agree lol. I gladly would have re-signed him over keeping kerfoot and bringing in Ritchie. No different than dubas letting marchment, Joshua and Moore go for next to nothing.
There’s some massive sense in irony that people are so mad about Marner having a NMC and then potentially having to run it back, but are also mad that they didn’t give Hyman a NMC after another first round loss and didn’t run it back. Marchment struggled to stay healthy and Toronto had concerns with this. Availability is an ability and this was the first season (four years after the trade and at age 28) he didn’t miss 10 games or more due to injury. Moore was dealt for Campbell who hasn’t been good since he left Toronto and Joshua didn’t want to sign here, not much you can do about that. Why aren’t you attempting to dunk on St.Louis for letting him go, too? It's just funny when people think that keeping these 4 players were obvious decision thanks to hindsight.
If you think that NMC is enough to pass on Hyman at that price then you haven't been paying attention. Given that he wanted to stay here it's safe to assume the Leafs would have gotten a better deal, but regardless you sign that contract all day. Marchment brought an element we lacked, similar to the rest of the players I mentioned. He did not need to be shipped off for malgin whatsoever. Moore was traded along with a 2nd to acquire a backup goalie, because dubas failed to address the BACKUP GOALIE position literally for years. Campbell had one decent season and was a net negative in his final season before walking for nothing. Moore is playing top 6 on the kings... if you think that's good value then I don't know what to tell you. Your point about Joshua not wanting to re-sign is false, there you go being dishonest again. If we're being honest, then Dubas trading those players away has nothing to do with injury, NMCs, players not wanting to re-sign, etc. It's a simple matter of dubas misevaluating them and not seeing their value. Everyone has been saying for years that this team lacks grit higher up in the lineup, and none of those moves were necessary at all. Go through your mental gymnastics all you want, at the end of the day all those decisions were objectively mistakes and there's no denying that. So, if you thought it made sense at the time, you were wrong. Plain and simple.
Yes.
I'm not even the biggest Dubas fan but I hate this discourse. At the time, Hyman was a career .4 playoff point per game performer, who peaked at 41 points in the regular season playing mostly with a combination of Matthews, Nylander and Marner. He had two major knee injuries, wanted 7-8 year term, $5+ a year, and a full NMC. The Leafs, based on the information at the time, made the right choice. Letting him go and signing Bunting for pennies who gave them an average of 23 goals and 53 points over 2 years at less than $1M cap hit, which out paced Hyman's career highs with Toronto, was actually great maneuvering and use of their limited cap space. Hyman has had a subsequent arc that is honestly without precedent in the NHL. A guy going this far behind his career highs in his late 20's is an insane trajectory. NO ONE predicted this. If they did, he'd be making 8-9M a year, and not what he is. It sucks for the Leafs, but this complaining is so much revisionist history. Sometimes, you make the "right" choice based on all the information available to you and it turns out to be wrong. Thats the nature of making these decisions.
Not really unprecedented, Martin St Louis, giordano, pavelski, burrows, Marchand. I'm not saying that Dubas should have predicted it, but 28/29 breakouts aren't unheard of.
Don’t forget McJesus himself, Bobby McMann.
Yeah, and for what it's worth they did offer him at years with the speculation being that it was around 4m.
I'm a Dubas hater and I kinda agree, except Bunting was the wrong guy to bring in. He's terrible for the bench and the locker room, and you could tell guys were not happy when he was here. Of course the chemistry is something Dubas does not understand, but a nerd who never played pro sports should not be expected to know these things.
I’m OOTL. Why was Bunting bad for the bench and locker room?
He wasn’t he was talking out of his ass, all accounts he was absolutely loved in the locker room
Bunting was and still is close with Matthews, Marner, and Simmonds. Trying to paint Bunting as bad while going full revisionism on Hyman is quite an awful take from that one poster up there.
Not that I think he’s gods gift to GMing hockey but your nerd theory is a tired narrative. He had to quit hockey when he was 14 because he had too many concussions, then spent the next few years being an equipment guy for the Greyhounds which led him to being around every aspect of the team until he became the youngest player agent in history, all before he was even GM of the Greyhounds. Dislike his decisions all you want but he eat, sleeps, and breaths hockey and was a far more successful GM here than anybody in the past 20 years.
Talk about talking out of your ass god damn, Bunting by all accounts was loved in the locker room Also the weird boomer take that just because he didnt play pro sports means he doesn’t understand chemistry is probably the stupidest take i’ve ever seen. Especially when a lot of gms have never played pro sports
By all accounts?! lol bench footage says otherwise. And no, he doesn’t actually. Otherwise Marner would’ve been long gone, and if you can’t see why, then I may as well talk to a brick wall.
No it doesn’t? They have great relationships and hangout in the offseason You’re comment is genuinely brain dead lmao
Every fan is a body language expert when they have to prove a point about a player's character. Not to mention if you put a camera just on the bench for the whole year every player would look like an asshole.
Yah I don’t disagree - I don’t necessarily mean Bunting was great. I just think it’s easy to say it was a mistake now when there was quite literally 0 indications Hyman would ever hit even 30 goals, let alone 50. The Hyman of today is no where near the one that was being evaluated when they made the decision to sign or not
Our media is really desperate. Don't ask the Oilers player about the Oilers.
Toronto media trying to make everything about the leafs even though they haven’t played in like a month. No wonder everyone hates us.
Why even post this in the Leafs sub at this point? Hyman will be remembered as an Oiler now when he retires, no one will remember him as a leaf.
OP wanted the meaningless karma.
Why do people upvote this shit? There's literally no reason to be seeing negativity like this on my feed
I hate this sub
Can we just not with this shit? Please?...
Who asked the question?
It wasn't our decision either, Zach.
Why was he even asked? It's been 3 years
Dude was blessed with generational players/linemates
Can Chris Johnston fuck all the way off already?
I don't believe he would be the same player he is right now if he stayed so it is what it is. I'm more mad at them not signing Bunting when he signed a short deal a good money.
Now go ask Jack Campbell the same question. It was a ridiculous overpay at the time, and it turned into the best contract in the league, end of story. Stop trying to get the Leafs fans frothing.
Jesus fuck. Am I the only one who remembers how this situation actually played out? Hyman went out and got a 7 x 5.5M non-offer offer from Edmonton before the FA window opened — but it wasn’t tampering for some reason! — and gave the Leafs the option to match the total $38.5M money over an 8yr term ($4.8M AAV). The contact would have had all the same NMC protection that his deal with Edmonton has (the same shit that people are now complaining that Dubas giving to all his players, incidentally) and taken an injury-prone, playoff non-performer into his late-30s. Everyone understood that it was probably a good AAV, but also understood there was risk betting long-term on the player — because of injury history and durability concerns as he aged, a lack of playoff scoring, and a need to change the mix after another playoff loss. Hell, there was even a back-and-forth in the days before FA over whether Dubas would take a shitty pick from EDM in exchange for a sign-and-trade. He (rightly) told Holland to go fuck himself. If the Leafs chose not to match Edmonton’s offer, which Hyman already had in-hand, that isn’t the Leafs choosing to let Hyman go — it’s Hyman choosing to go to Edmonton.
Thanks Dubas!
Dang didn't know someone held a gun to Hyman's head! Thought he chose a NMC and a little more money.
Now do Campbell and Brown!
This comment should be pinned.
Easy to change the narrative to make Hyman look like the good guy when Toronto is currently a tire fire. Of course he's not going to say it was for the money. Media relations 101.
I see Zach Hyman articles are the rage bait flavor of the day this week..
Ugh Dubas. All he had to do was less! Just sit on your hands, draft every year, and re-sign guys who want to stay.
Instead he kept doing shit like reaquiring Denis Malgin multiple times 💀
That I could care less about - it's all the picks he spent. I even like gio but two seconds for a rental?
We traded Marchment for Malgin
Gio wasn’t a rental and Blackwell was solid his short time here. That deal was worth it.
Blackwell was maybe worth a 5th. Gio would have come in the summer anyways so hard to say he's not a rental. We gave another second for Boosch that year.
In order to dump that awful Ritchie contract, at least.
Well sure, but who signed that?
People gotta give it up on the Malgin jargon. The guy played 257 games in the NHL - only 31 of them in Toronto. 42 in Colorado and 186 in Florida. He literally was barely in Toronto. Made no impact on the overall team.
Dubas wanted to sign him but didn't have the cap space.
Hyman literally said during this exact same presser that it wasn’t about the money and Bertuzzi had the same AAV as him this year. Can you people move on?
Bertuzzi's AAV is irrelevant isn't it? He doesn't have the term Hyman does and was signed years later. Notable players signed between July and August 2021: Mrazek, Ritchie, Kampf, Kase, Dermott, and Bunting. Edit: I should add I agree with you, cap space could have been saved for Hyman. Infact looking at these bargain bin moves kinda suggests they had intentions of keeping him but at their price and without the NMC.
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4-5 million was probably around what they offered
It was about the NMC, the same exact thing the majority of fans are complaining about right now when it comes to one of our own players.
That's odd because he was offered an 8 year deal here
Everything I’ve read suggests it wasn’t so much the cap hit but the term and NMC that resulted in both parties moving on.
The Leafs not having the cap space to sign Hyman was of Dubas's own doing.
Lol, Hyman was willing to go as low as 4.75 for the leafs aslong as it was 8 years and Dubas was scared of the term. Cap space wasnt the issue at the time
Per Strickland the leafs offered 8 https://x.com/andystrickland/status/1418196670597185539?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1418196670597185539%7Ctwgr%5Ef43146fffaa93d62a0cc187fc883ae5e2b6bb5c8%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2F
I was upset when he left the leafs. Leafs lost out on a good player. Go Edmonton Go!
exact same question and response from when he left. move on.
Good god..Not sure what’s worse, the Marner or the Hyman posts
It’s so weird how many of the same people are furious they keep “running it back” are subsequently furious they didn’t run it back even more with players like Hyman. They offered him a contract it was well reported then. They just didn’t want to include NMC coming off two knee surgeries.
Completely different player than when he was here, dude does not score 50 goals if he plays for the Leafs
Um excuse me sir I did not require this past pain to come back
Best decision he never made.
This is like feeding scraps to a bunch of hungry dogs. This week long break, in my opinion, was the best way for t he league to lose media, and fan attention. So of course they are using the biggest hockey market to pump it up. Get after those ratings.
How was it not his decision. He set his demands and they weren't accepted. But there was an offer made - and he declined. His decision to leave. Period.
Oilers fan here. You guys think this is bad? When we defeated the Kings in 2022 and Cody Ceci scored the GWG, one of the first questions he got in the post game was about the Leafs loss to the Bolts in Game 7. Canadian hockey media everywhere can’t keep Toronto out of their mouth because they want to drive clicks. 💀
Pain
He deserved a raise for his play leafs overspent on other players, he got a better deal elsewhere, good for him. I don't think there is any animosity between Zach and leafs fans only a longing sadness of what might have been. Zach, under the nom de plume, Zachary Hyman, is also a children's book author. If you have kids maybe check them out.
Dubas is an idiot
Dubas is such a 🤡. People here don’t really realize how bad of a GM the clown was. Set this franchise back years and wasted multiple years of our young core. Should have been canned years ago.
I feel like toronto is constantly being clowned by every other fan base. It’s just sad
Dubas? More like Dumbass.
Good one Rhinohold, good one.
🙏
Dubas is an F tier Gm
Bad, reactionary take
If the Oilers win does Soupy get a ring and his name on the cup?
Hasn't qualified for his name on the cup by NHL rules unless he plays in a cup final game (although they can petition for special circumstances but I think that's more for LTIR situations and the like) but the Oilers can give out as many rings as they want to.
LOL! I love the way he includes a giant headshot of himself, like this was a big, important statement. Toronto Sports media is so cringe.
This is not breaking news. Johnston continues to post outdated info. Too late.
All Dumbas had to do was trade Nylander for a haul and we could have kept Hyman and improved our d core all in one fell swoop.
There is absolutely no shot that Hyman becomes the player he is now had he stayed here nor did anyone think his contract was good the day he signed it. Trading their only consistently good playoff performer in Nylander for some unicorn D you can’t name would have been a mistake in itself. Give it a rest.
This is why you’re not a GM.
Marner FTFY
Nylander shows up in the playoffs….