Avid Sports Fan
Joined: Jan. 2019
Posts: 993
Likes: 274
The hatred Marner gets when out of the past 50 games he has the highest ppg average even over Matthews. The problem with Marner is his size which does hurt a little come playoffs time when pressured.
Fact is we need both playmakers, high end scorers and net front presences to score in both regular season to make the dance then in playoffs. I hope Marner becomes more consistent in the playoffs where he doesn't go pointless in 4/5 games. That is annoying.
But a large reason for the less points is more on coaching. Every year it's the same ol song. Our 22%power play dries up over the last month and goes into the playoffs and we are lucky if it operates at an 8% clip. We have tried many different power play coaches and yet Keefe stays there. With better coaching our power play can probably operate at 15% which would equate an extra goal every 2 games. Over a 7 game series that gives Marner, Matthews and Nylander an extra 3-4 points and now our offense looks better and the players score more.
This past year so far we have Matthews playing the back end with Reilly with the puck coming off Tavares hoping to go to Marner then to Reilly or Matthews. It is very predictable. It is time to change. Throw Marner on the back with Reilly and it changes the passing lanes which can lead to different chances. Keefe refuses to alter all he did was change Jarnkrok for Bert.
Last year in Florida series Nylander was humming and what did Keefe do plant Nylander in pp2 refusing to promote him to pp1. Play your hottest player during the playoffs? Really?