It's game over, Toronto. Hardness, pizzal or Monpanteki. We're here with you live after another one, another crap loss against a bad team, where, quite honestly, this time, we kind of outplayed them. We kind of. Yeah. And there's one name that just keeps rearing its neck on us. One name that might have to go. He might have played himself out of Toronto today, and that is Ilya Sampsonov. The Leafs lose in OT, so we keep that OT training alive. Now, I think we have the most OT games in the league so far. We lose six to five against the Columbus Blue Jackets. Yes. We lose the head to head two to one against the Blue Jackets in a game where we outshot them 33 to 20, and we lost six to five.

Not a good game for Samsonov. And he's had a string of bad games, and Jones has outplayed him. And here's the thing for me, Samsonov, I have faith in Sansonov to get back to at least a backup standard this season. You've seen that. Not necessarily this season. He's mentally just completely fucked. Completely mentally checked out. And clearly, he needs to get his confidence back.

But he's also on a one year. What's giving us the confidence for him to come back? I think he's out.

Really should not have taken a one year deal with his consistency issues, but who knows what the lease were offering him as well. But at the end of the day, he sucked. That's another goals. I think he has like an 871 on the season. I think their expected goals were like 2.1 in total in the game, and he let in six. With that being said, I don't think all the goals were his fault. But at some point, you need to make a save. And in this game, especially if you took this game in a bubble, the Leafs played well, allowing only 20 shots. I think you can't argue that they didn't play well. They outshot, they out chanced pretty much every step of the way. With that being said, if you took this game in a bubble and you watched all of the goals back, most of them are pretty big mistakes from our forwards and defensemen.

Yeah.

Now, that's not an excuse. It's just something that is true about this game. The goals that he allowed were hard to stop. With that being said, you need your goalie to bail you out sometimes. You're going up against Elvis Merzlink is in the first period. But then Spencer Martin, who's like a career third stringer in backup, who has like an 892 or something in eleven games this season, not much better. And he's outplaying you. He had to stop way more high danger chances than Sansonov. So even with this argument that it's like, oh yeah, all of those goals were defensive breakdowns and all of those goals were pretty tough chances to stop for Sansonov. You need a save. And especially that fantili goal. Like that was the worst of the bunch. That five five goal, like, that's not a good chance. All the rest of them, yeah, you could say whatever. A guy left alone, defensive breakdown, a turnover, that shouldn't have happened, whatever. That was an outside shot. And Fantilia is a great player. No disrespect to him, he's got an amazing shot, but your goalie needs to save that in a five four game in the third period and we can't get a save.

The team in front of them cannot make a mistake because it always ends up in the back of the net. You need your goalie to bail you out sometimes. And Sansonov consistently this season has not been able to do so. And it's frustrating.

Yeah, well, I came into the game and I was like, hey, I have no expectations for Sammy. I mean, we all know he's had such a bad season and it's not even just a start at this point. We're 30, what, 32 games into the season. This is a consistent situation where he's not playing day in and day out. He's not playing well day in and day out. So it's not even just a lack of starts. But I came into this game today and I was like, hey, listen, we can't expect anything out of him realistically. If wool was healthy, he wouldn't even be in the lineup right now.

Right?

And I'm honestly getting to the point where Hildeb might need to come in for him. We'll talk about that in just a was. I was in the camp that, hey, our forwards, our skaters just cannot give anything. They can't give any chances to Columbus because you have a guy who is clearly looks, his body language is just all out of whack. You see him looking up at the scoreboards, you see him looking down in despair every time something goes in. Mentally, he's checked out. He's completely cooked right now.

Checked out, not meaning doesn't care, but just checked out as in like he needs a reset. Yeah, he needs some time off.

What he really needs is to pass through waivers and play in the marlies. We can't have him or just get him some time off where he can practice one on one with the goaltending coaches and whatnot and get some confidence under him. But right now nothing is working for him and for him to be out there, it's just a liability. This season is not a given. Like last season where we were kind of locked into a playoff spot. We were locked into our seed halfway through the season. Right now we're fighting for each and every point. The east is a tough, tough and.

The Atlantic division especially tough division right now.

It's not easy. Nothing's going to be given to you and each of these points counts. Right. We're lucky right now that we've had so many ots where we are getting one point out of the two. If we aren't getting those, let's say he lets in another bad goal today or whatnot. We are slowly going to start dropping and we're going to drop pretty fast, right? Yeah.

I mean, I'm not too worried about playoff not making the playoffs, at least at this stage, just because they've been managing to get points at least. But it is a huge concern for me that without Joseph Wohl, our best goalie right now is Martin Jones. And it's crazy. He's playing well. He's playing well. Like, no disrespect to Martin Jones, but he's had like eight years in a row where he's posted pretty poor results.

Yeah, he hasn't played well since Jose, honestly. Right?

Like it's been a long time he wasn't that. Like it's been a long time since Martin Jones has been a good goalie and I can't bring myself to expect that from Martin Jones over a full like and into the playoffs. God forbid we need to use a like. It's worrying to me that we have one goalie that we can rely on right now, or I guess two if you count Martin Jones. But one goalie that I expect we can rely on later into the season who can keep it up and be consistent throughout. I was really expecting Samsunov to be a bigger force coming into the season than he has. And yeah, to me it's a situation where maybe just send him through waivers, bring up Hildebee. I don't think he'll hurt you. I think Hildebee might actually. It might do him a service to get a few NHL games in for his development and there's no way he's worse than Samsonov. And I think Sansonov needs to build his I think, you know, you can potentially do that in the AHL. Although the way he's playing right now, I'm worried that he won't be able to stop a beach ball in the either.

But yeah, it's a tough situation because I think everyone was going in with Samsonov as the starter going into the season and to see him fall to essentially third stringer and below a third stringer now, but it's rough.

Exactly. And I think the way he's losing these games, the way he's playing against, quite honestly, pretty bad teams is the concerning part.

Right.

If you're a goalie that's on a slump, what better, I guess, situation? What better way to get your confidence up than playing two games against Columbus in a row and then throwing the Sabers game in between? Right. These are teams that, yes, have caused us trouble in the past for whatever reason, but these are teams that are totally beatable. They're not good teams. And for whatever reason, he's just looked atrocious on there. Like, I'm looking back in his December and my God, other than that 40 win against Nashville, I'm seeing a four three loss against the Islanders, six five OT loss against the Blue Jackets, 93 against the Sabers, and then six five today. He's given up so many goddamn goals. He's a 0.851 in the month of December. I don't care. Eight five, 1.851. Jeez, his state percentage is bad. He is not good. He's averaging more than six goals let in basically in the month of December.

Yeah, I think I saw a stat that he let in over four goals in eight of 15 games that he's played, which is over half the games where he's allowed four goals or more. Yeah, he hasn't been good, and I think it's safe to say that he needs a reset. It's just a matter of how the Leafs go about doing. Like, are they going to look for another? Like, is that a priority for tree living to figure out or the goalie coaches to work with Samsonoff to try and regain his confidence so he can come back in the playoffs?

I think they're going to have to look for another goalie, but in the time being.

But where? Who's selling a good goalie?

It's going to be tough. You're going to have to figure it out. Right now. We finally have our defensive core pretty much back, right? A lot of the guys that were injured are finally coming back or they're healthier or whatnot. Right. They're just getting some games under them, getting the legs under them, and our defense is not the issue for the first time in a long time right now. Right?

Yeah.

I'm not saying you need to rush and find another goaltender right now. I'm saying I don't want to see Samsnov in net at all anymore. Essentially bringing in Denis Hildevy. Like, I understand the guy's 22 years old. I understand he's had what, like 16 games maybe for the Marleys. He's had 14 games this season. Exactly. He's had a .92 in this 14 games for this season. Right. Am I expecting him to come up and be a world beater? No, obviously not. But sometimes you got to have some faith in your young guys and who knows, maybe he performs well. Even if he doesn't, maybe he's a below average goaltender. That experience playing in the show is going to do you wonders. Right, exactly. You're going to get some experience, you're going to find out how the rest of the show operates, what kind of shots you can expect to go against, and you'll have world class trainers that you're going to be working with. Right. Maybe a couple of games is going to be good because wall, I don't think he's going to be out for too much longer. What are they saying? Like January, February, return time?

Yeah, I think the timeline was around six weeks at the time of injury and I think it's been close to that now.

Yeah. So he's not going to need a ton of games. We're not expecting him to start like ten games or something. I think maybe like five games or something. That's good enough. Just start him because Samsunov right now, he's played himself out of the spot. He's completely dejected. Honestly, putting him out there is probably worse for him than just benching him.

Yeah. And the other thing that, you know, should be noted is I think the only way Samsung really gets out of this slump is by playing games. And we can't afford to do that in the know. I'm not saying like Tank the Marley's, but maybe give him a few games in the Marleys, see how he does, and then if he builds back his confidence, that can do wonders for like, the truth is it's not a skill issue for Samsonov. It's not an issue where he's not flexible enough or he doesn't have the agility to make these saves. It's a problem between the brains, between the ears. But yeah, Samsunov is just struggling mentally. And I think the only way he gets out of it is by starting games and playing well and know confidence. It sucks because it's like, this happens every goddamn year, man.

Yeah.

See it all the time with, like, Campbell and it's just like we have goalie troubles every year. Infuriating. Yeah.

It's lucky that we got rid of Campbell when we did, otherwise we would have two problems up our sleeves right now. Hey, guys, there's a ton of people watching right now. There's 216 people out here. Make sure you hit that, like, button. We're going to be having our presser, a live presser, towards the end of the show, so drop your questions in the chat. We will be looking at them and we will be answering it. Let's maybe spend a little bit of time. Let's talk a little bit about the game, because, yeah, coming into it, Geo is back in the lineup, right. His first game back, he looked all right. He had a decent amount of time that he played right. It really didn't look like he was ramping up at all. It looked like they just threw him in the deep end.

He looked excellent, though.

Yeah, he looked fantastic. And then Keith also had his 300th game as a coach for the Maple Leafs. Sucks. It's a loss, but Salavi, that's how it goes. The Leafs start off the game five minutes in, Marner gets a goal. And it was again another goal where Marner just uses his smarts, uses some patience or practices some patience, holds the puck a little bit, drops it back to Riley and gets himself into position to get a deflection or to get a rebound. Right. In this case, it gets a deflection off. Nyez escapes and lands right on the blade of martyr stick. But, yeah. What do you think about us? I guess, like, going up.

It was a great start. I don't think that was an issue. I think we started off pretty hot. I don't know what the shots were at the time of the goal, but I think Columbus only had one shot on net for like the first ten minutes or something like that.

Yeah.

So I thought we played really well, and that goal was really solid from a defensive to offense transition. We saw Gudro kind of one v four and then get stopped in our defensive zone, and we kind of translated that to offense with Riley jumping up and making that thought. You know, overall, everyone played pretty solid and it was a great start, and that goal was a beautiful play from Riley and murder, even though it sort of took a lucky deflection, but still solid. Play. Good start.

Yeah, exactly. And I think that was the whole, I guess, recap of that first period. I feel like the first period was a pretty solid effort. Right. After that first goal, obviously, Columbus, they get a goal by Syllinger and then Matthews scores to put the leaps back up in the lead. Right. Now, let's talk about that 1 second.

I have a note in my early game, and it says Sansanov not tested so far in first five minutes. Leafs really helping him out in the start. And that aged very.

That syllinger. Yeah, other than that syllinger goal, which, let's be honest, like Lily lost an edge and that gives cylinder like a bunch of space. Exactly. He lost a skate.

It was an unfortunate play.

Yeah, you can't really say much about that. It was just unfortunate, like you said. Right. But other than that, it was 14 to four shots on goal in favor of the Leafs. Right. Quite frankly, I feel like that was the only chance, the only high scoring chance I saw out of Columbus in that first period.

Right.

The Leafs did completely lock it down and help out Sammy as much as possible, especially in the first period. Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah. Something like that goes in, but that's something where the analysts were talking about it in their commission and whatnot. Situations like this happen. Right. But you would expect a goaltender to make an unexpected save right here and there. You don't expect it day in, day out. You don't expect a play like Bassey, but you expect at least a stop. Right. And was not the case in this situation. I don't blame him too much, and I don't blame the Leafs on this play at least, or at least on this period, because they really did try everything to help out Sammy.

Right.

And they end off the period getting a goal and recovering that lead. Right. A beautiful shot by Matthews from a near impossible angle. Just absolutely insane. Actually. It surprises me every single time, the way that these guys are able to make goals out of these narrowest of margins.

Yeah, absolutely.

That was his 13th goal, 18th point in nine games. How fucking insane is that?

Yeah, he's got 29 goals on the season. He's like on a crazy pace. It's insane. He's insane. But the shots were, I think were 15 to four at the end of the period.

And they updated 14 to four.

Oh, was it 14 to four? Yeah, they updated and yeah, I thought the Leafs played well. Really, the only chance we gave up ended up in the back of our net. And also, at the time, I didn't really blame Samsung, and it was the second shot of the game. It was a really tough shot. It was a prime position. The defensive structure was not set because Lilliagren fell down. It was an unexpected turnover. There was traffic in front and it was great shot placement. It sucks because it was the second shot of the game, and I don't know if that's what unraveled in Samsonov's head, like, in terms of just that quick goal against. But yeah, I can't blame him for that. And like you said, I can't blame the Leafs really either, for that. Matthew's shot was amazing. It sort of reminds me of Fantili's goal as well. Outside angle and like, Fantili's goal, if you give a good shooter that, know, it's tough to. Yeah, it's tough to talk about these.

Yeah, it's a pain in the ass.

But I want to say though, marner on that Matthews goal was really good. He started the play playing keep away, essentially. He held the puck for like 10 seconds before getting it to Matthews, and he drew two defenders up high in the zone to allow Matthews to kind of just get lost pretty much around where the hash marks are on the outside angle where he can get that shot off. So hats off to Marner. I thought every lease forward that we pay a lot of money to be good was fantastic in this. Know, they all scored. Riley had three assists. Not much more you can ask from.

Yeah, as of late, honestly, Riley has been playing really well, like jumping up on the plays, getting some offensive help or positioning or shots or whatever you want to call it. He's been helping to contribute a lot and it's looked really good for him so far. How have you thought of Riley's play as of late? And do you think that there's anything that he's changed up to help see the difference?

I guess I think he's just carried forward from the playoffs. He's been excellent since then and I don't think he's really slowed down.

Well, as of late, he's been on a complete different pace. I'll pull up his game log right now, but in the last couple of games. Yeah. So three assists tonight. He had an assist on Wednesday. In the last. What is this? Six games? Seven games, he's had 345678 assists, right? Yeah.

But he's like stepping it up. He has 27 points in 33 games in the season. He's pretty much close to a point per game player. Yeah. Which is super impressive. He's played like a 1D. He's played easily to his contract. I don't think you can really expect more from him. And I don't think you can expect more from Marner or Marner a little bit, but Matthews, not Marner in this game, but overall in the season. But I don't think you can expect more from Matthews. And I don't think you can expect more from like, they've all exceeded expectations for know, even with their contracts, know, it sucks because we're talking about a loss here and we're talking about how good our star players were. But yeah, Riley was excellent and he was excellent again today. Three assists and all of the assists were earned. They weren't bullshit secondary assists. I think he was really solid.

Well, then let's try to clump up some of these goals that Columbus had together. Because a lot of them, like you mentioned early on, it was because of crap, I guess, like situations where the Leafs kind of put themselves in a bad situation and really didn't help Samsunov in some of these plays. Right? So for example, I'm looking at the Columbus goal. This is. I think it's. I'm going to mispronounce his name. Gauss gaunts. What?

I don't even know who you're talking about.

It was the second.

Okay?

Yeah. The second goal for Columbus. The Leafs were caught on a sloppy line change.

Right?

That's a situation that really you could have avoided, right? The puck just doesn't go deep enough when you're making a line change. And because of that, Columbus recognizes this, gets a quick rush and Samsunov, unlucky bounce. Really? It bounces off the top of the stick, lands on his back and goes in the back of the net. Shitty situation, right? But that's completely avoidable if they dump the puck further in, right?

Or if they just don't fucking change when Columbus has. Why the hell did the defenders go for a change when Columbus had possession? I was like, what are you doing? The shots are 17 to six. You're dominating the game. It's three one, and then you go for the dumbest change I've ever seen in my life. Why did the defenders go for the. All five Leafs went for a long change like, it's the second period. You have the long change. The bench is on the other side. And we didn't have possession. We didn't even get it deep. Columbus had it on their stick when we went for just. Oh God. And Samsung, honestly, he should have had that. What pisses me off more is like, that was one. He could have bailed us out on.

There's a couple that he could have.

Bailed us out and it's an unfortunate bounce. I get it. But oh my God, it was so frustrating. Yeah, stupid hockey. It's stupid hockey resulting in the back of your net.

It's stupid. But these are things that both. You can't just look at Samsung. But the whole point I'm trying to get at through this is yes, Samsonov looked horrible. Yes, we would have wanted a couple of saves from him but the Leafs or the team in front of him could have helped him out a little bit more in that situation too. Right? The next school, Cam Johnson. Yeah, Cam Johnson. They were fucking three on one behind Samsonov at the back of the Leafs net. And Emile Bemstrom, somehow he's able to strip the puck off of Riley. Three on one. I don't know how. He grabs it, throws it in front of the net and throws it right on the sticks of Cam Johnson and obviously he's not going to miss from there.

Johnson, Kent Johnson.

Sorry, Ant. Johnson.

Yeah, Kent.

Kent. Sorry, Kent Johnson. And obviously he's not going to miss from there. Right. This is another situation where they could have helped him out. It was a bad play. Right? And then we look at the fantili goal that was purely on Samsunov.

It's a good shot though. No disrespect to Fantili, but yeah, Samsunov needs to have that. There's nothing more the defenseman can do than give him a clean shot outside angle above the hash marks. But yeah, I agree on the Kent Johnson goal as. Yeah, Kent Johnson. He's a good player. He's not going to miss a chance when he's like that. Open in front of the net with that much time. And Sammy was late to react, to be fair. But Domi and Brody, I think were the two other guys that went below the goal line to help Riley out and left Kent Johnson wide open. And yeah, I think that's a mistake and a miscommunication on their know. They see Riley battling and I know that they want to give know the open lane to pass to, but that's a mistake. You don't leave a guy in just. I don't know, that's dumb hockey to me as well. Obviously another situation where it would be nice to get bailed out. But again, it's another situation where I'm not blaming Samsunov on that specific goal because it's not really his fault. You just want him to make one of these saves and then we win this game, one of these hard to make saves, and you win the.

It's. It's just a tough situation. But again, defensive breakdown, really something that should have never happened.

Yes, exactly. And it just sucks because it wasn't for a lack of trying for the Leafs, right? Like, yeah, you had these bad plays, or you had this bad defensive breakdown or whatnot, but up until that ot goal, or, the Leafs were the only team that had. Or that were up, I guess, in the game. Right. We were either always up by one or two, or it was a tied game. We never let up the lead to Columbus at all until that final Ot goal. Right? So the forwards, they did absolutely everything they could today, right? Marner, he gets the goal. Matthews was able to get one. Nick Robertson, we didn't even mention him. He stops a 14 game skid. Yeah. He gets his first goal in 14 games, his fourth of the season. And then Neelander gets one. Tavares gets one. All of our forwards, all of our guys were contributing, and they were having some kind of offensive, I guess, upside. They were keeping us in the game throughout the entire.

Like, our stars showed up. But also from a secondary scoring perspective, I know Nick Robertson is the only secondary scoring we got this game, but Bobby McMahon, Noah Gregor, both had fantastic rushes that resulted in very high danger chances that got know we were getting offensive output or offensive chances from essentially every single one of our lines today. Domi had a few good shots on net. One drive where he was essentially left alone. I don't know if it was Martin Ormer's Lincoln's in the net at that time, but they made a good save. We're getting chances from all of our forwards. We are limiting shots pretty drastically now. The shots we let through were very high danger. So that's something that I think could be fixed. But in the end of the day, you outshoot your opponent pretty much like, what was it overall? It was 33 to, I believe, like, 33 to 21.

21, 22. Yeah, 33 to 21.

And that sucks, but there's nothing you can really do about it if your goalie needs to make a fucking save.

Yeah. And you talk about the high scoring chances. I'm looking at money puck right now, right? And, yeah, they had a couple, but it wasn't like it was outstanding or it wasn't anything insane. They had a 2.1 expected goals versus the Leafs, 4.9. Right?

Well, there is a bit of context to put into that. Like, money puck is like any public expected goals model. Doesn't really take into account poc. Or player tracking. So this stuff kind of gets standardized or normalized over a large sample. But today, there were a lot of plays where people were left alone in front, which would not really show up in expected goals. So that's sort of why that happened. But on the whole, I agree. We didn't give up that many chances. We gave up probably, I would say five good chances. And Samsung off stopped one of them.

Maybe, and a lot of them were in the third period or the OT. Like, the first period was completely shut down. The second period, we still outshot them. What was it, twelve to seven? I can count maybe like three, two, three pretty high scoring chances. But other than that, we pretty much locked down the gates for them. Right. It really just seemed like anytime we had a bad misplay where we didn't absolutely hand Samsunov a save on a platter, it doesn't end up in the back of it. Yeah. It ends up in the back of the net, which sucks.

Yeah. There's nothing you can do. There's nothing you do. You can do. Like, every single game, a team will make multiple mistakes. That is just the nature of hockey. You cannot play a perfect game.

Exactly.

Your goalie needs to bail you out sometimes. And we made, I would say, five major mistakes in this game, and our goalie bailed us out once. He made, like, one really good save, and that is it. That is not a good save percentage on high danger shots against. That's a horrible save percentage on high danger shots against. And you can say you can blame the Leaf's defensive structure for breaking down on those plays, and that would be true. That is something that they would need to fix, that they would need to look at in video. But you need to expect to save in at least one of these other goals that went in. You need to expect to save, and that's the win right there. Even if he only allows in, like, four goals, that's a win. Everyone else did everything right. This is a stupid ass loss. It's a stupid, dumb loss that I hate to see for a struggling goaltender, because it's just like he's in the deaths right now, man. Yeah.

And this wasn't even his first pretty bad OT loss or whatnot. Let me count the OT losses that he's had in particular. There's one tonight against the Blue Jackets again, which we lost six five.

Yeah.

And then against the Islanders, a four three OT loss, Chicago, a four three OT loss, Boston, a three two shootout loss, and Nashville, back in November, a three two OT loss. That's six OT losses where if he makes one more save, if he pulls out one rabbit out of a hat, we get those extra points, right?

Yeah. Did you hear on the broadcast they said something interesting where it was like in the third period, he has a save percentage of like 946.

Oh, yeah.

Compared to his other two periods, which I thought was like wild. And he let him one goal in the third period. But to be fair, to put into context, he's been pulled multiple times, which obviously plays a factor into his third period save percentage compared to his rest. But yeah, I thought that was wild stat. But yeah, honestly, at the end of the second period, I think the shots were 26 to eleven. And I'm pretty sure we were, what? Tied?

Yeah.

Or were we up one? I don't remember, but still.

Yeah. Going into that second period, he let.

In four goals on eleven shots.

Yeah, we were five.

That's unacceptable no matter what the goals are. That is unacceptable. That is something where I would expect if you put David Ayers in that.

So then do you want to see Hildeby? What do you want to see changed?

Put him down for a conditioning stint, put him in the AHL, get his confidence up, bring up Hildebee, give him a couple know. I don't think they should do it if it's like a long term thing, but do it for a few games. He's not going to get fucking claimed on waivers.

Yeah, that's for sure. Because I'm looking through our schedule right now and we have a decent amount of back to backs like January 2 and third. Those are two back to backs against the Kings and then Anaheim. And then we have another back to back on the 13th and 14th, Colorado and Detroit. So we have a decent number of opportunities. I'm counting three back to backs in January where Hildeby could come in. Right. And honestly, that's three games is not a big deal. It's not going to be something that's insane. Three games, that's going to take you to the end of January, and then we'll reevaluate, see how Hildeby is doing, see where wall is, and see where Samsonov is with his stint with the Marleys. Right.

Yeah. And that's another thing is in a back to back situation, you're much less incentivized to pull a goalie to put know if he's having a bad game because you need the rest for Martin Jones to play. Like, I see a lot of people saying, like, Keith should have pulled him. And while I do agree to a certain extent, there is that incentive to make sure that your guy is rested to come in tomorrow and have Samsunov just battle it out. And that's probably not great for know, to be in a situation where he's really in his own.

Yeah.

And then you end up losing that game pretty much because of him. It can't be good for his.

Put in. You're putting tomorrow or the back to backs game in jeopardy as well. Right. Because, for example, let's say Martin Jones comes in and he's cold, and God forbid, something that's. You're losing today's points, and you're losing the points for tomorrow against Carolina and going forward. Right. So today I saw a lot of conversation about pulling him. I really didn't want to see it. I think just let him battle through it. Let him see if he can pull himself out of the slump, see if he can play a little bit better, because we really don't have the luxury at this point. We only have two goaltenders, and then Hildeby, if you want to bring him up. Right. We don't have the luxury of being able to pull a guy, and then if someone gets injured or someone lose their confidence or stops playing well, we'd be completely screwed. Right?

Yeah. I don't know. It's a tough situation to be in for a coach in that scenario. I do think with hindsight, of course, it probably would have been a good idea to pull him.

I still don't think so. I still don't.

I don't know.

He let in one goal in that third period, every shot against.

I was tense.

Yeah, exactly. You were. But the one goal that he. Or, I guess he. Two goals because he led in a goal in the third and then one in OT.

But the OT goal also, like, what chance did he have to be fair to him as well?

Yeah, exactly. But that's. What. Why. Why, in hindsight, why do you see that Martin Jones would have been the better situation or the better option?

I don't know. Because a little more confidence maybe, for the team in front of him, too.

Okay. You think it's like a more mental thing?

I don't know. Because honestly, if we had a different goalie tonight, we would have won. It's like that type of thing, but it is what it is. Honestly, I do think he had a tough game, but I do think that we gave up a decent amount in terms of the chances. You want your goalie to make a save when you don't expect him to.

Exactly. All right, guys, we're going to be going into the live presser, so if you guys have any questions, make sure you drop it down below into the chat. There's still a ton of you guys watching, so make sure you hit that like button and hit subscribe. We're almost at 100,000 subscribers. Yeah, so we're pretty close there. Help us out and yeah, throw your questions down there. Armand, other than the Samsung off shit show, did you have any other thoughts on the game? I know we had some good things.

But looked good in his first game back. I think it's really good to have him back. I think he especially helps out her pk. Yeah, I thought he looked like.

Honestly, what do you think of Benoit and legislative? Because it really seems like those two are kind of fighting for one lot now in the lineup.

I was surprised that Timmins is getting pushed out. Well, not really surprised. I think he has been outplayed. But him being a right shot I thought would have changed things and maybe elevated. But he is a completely different skill set to be fair, as well. Benoit and legisl I think, are pretty steady defensemen and it's great to see because I wasn't exactly worried about defensive depth going into the season because I know Benoit and legisl both had NHL experience, but at know in the preseason they showed know warts in their play and Benoit especially didn't look all that good in the preseason and he's been a very pleasant surprise for me. I thought he had a lot of chemistry tonight with McCabe. Positionally. I think they knew where each other were pretty much all the time. They were connecting on passes and yeah, I think Benoit also brings something physically to the team that lacks. We saw him throw a big hit. We saw him fight good Branson go after know he was getting into it. And legisl as know last game he got into it. I forgot with who, but when they took an extra whack and he always.

Looks like he's throwing some big hits.

Every now and honestly, that's something that I love to see regardless of whether or not it's warranted. Like when legisl went after the sense player when he took an extra whack, it's like the whistle hadn't gone yet. It makes sense for the sense player to keep going for it, but it also makes sense for your team to stick up for your goalie and get into a tussle when they take an extra whack when it's covered. I love that. I absolutely love that. So I'm very glad to see that we have two guys that seem to be pretty steady and are also willing to get in people's faces and play a pretty physical game. And honestly, right now, with Brody matched up with Riley and Geo matched up with like, those are pairings that we know work. It's now a matter of finding McCabe a D partner and Benoit, I thought looked really solid with him. So that's good to see. I'm excited to see if they continue with that or if they put legisl in for tomorrow.

For sure. We'll see how that goes because it looks like they're kind of just playing around and trying to figure out who. Yeah, like you said, is going to be his partner to the dance. McKee's partner to the dance. So we have some questions coming in. Diom says, do you think it's too risky to put Samstav on waivers? No, he is not going to get claimed, to be honest. Yeah, there's no hesitation. He is not going to get claimed. Matthew, he's saying, as much as I hate the Bruins, I stand by the Boston cream donut. Why did he tell you in that?

Oh, it's because I said honeycruoler is the best donut.

Oh, yeah. You're wrong. Boston cream is the best. No, honey, it's not. Even closer is the best.

I always get it. It's nice and light compared to other donuts, which.

Yeah, no, I want. Never mind. I'm not going to say that. The one thing cream is great, Nesanov.

Isn'T even an RFA anymore. He's a UFA. Okay. Yeah, he's not getting claimed. I was going to say if he was an RFA, maybe he's not getting claimed.

Yeah, there's another question down here. Okay. Yeah. So, Travis, I'm not even going to pronounce his last name. Says not worried about the Leafs bottom, the defensive depth. They have no top end. Bottom end doesn't matter. Listen, right now the problem is not our defense. I understand. Like, yeah, there are some holes. Obviously you'd want to share some stuff up. That's something that we've been talking about since the beginning of the season. Right. But right now the urgent issue is our goaltendant, right? We came to the season thinking that we wouldn't have an issue with our goaltenders. Our tandem should look okay, but right now it's not working. And for wall, I mentioned this when he got injured as well. This is the second time he's had that same ankle sprain or whatever injury in two seasons. He had that last season at the beginning of training camp. And that's why he missed training camp. Right. He was coming back from an injury and then he injures his ankle and he's out for some time. And this time again, it's ankle injury. So I don't know if it's a reoccurring thing, but I do know when you mess with tendons and when those start getting damaged, they get weaker.

They don't get stronger over time. So you need to have another guy in there just as a backup just to give him some options because you can't rely on one guy to take you all the way. It's just not feasible.

Yeah, I agree. I do see your comments. At least have one top 4d. Riley and the rest are five, six, seven level. I tend to disagree with that. I don't think five of our defensemen are bottom pairing, but I think we don't have a top 2d. You know what I mean? Like, Brody is a great player. I love him. He's not exactly like someone who has some lapsed.

Yeah, he also has some lapses of judgment where you're know there are some.

Plays where he doesn't look all that. So I do think we lack someone know the second best defenseman on the team, that type of thing, someone of that caliber. But I do think we also have like four guys who I think I would be fine putting in a pinch in the top four. You know what mean? Like, I'm okay with Lillegren being there for a know. I don't think he's a top 4D man, but I think he's right on that edge. I think the same for know, he can take so many minutes and at his age, obviously you don't want him to, but he like he has the ability to do that in a pinch. And I don't think defense is the biggest issue for this team at this stage. With everyone coming back, especially with Benoit and legislative kind of coming out and being good for their depth. Do I think it would be good to add a defenseman? Absolutely. Especially if you can push those guys down. If you can get like a number two guy, that would be great. But they're hard to come by and I think we have a bigger priority right now in that's.

Yeah. And that kind of leads to David W's question. How soon do you believe GM tree Livin will waive Samsonov? Should a trade that involves that goalie? Should a trade that involves that goalie isn't. I think tree Livin is looking for another option as we speak. Now the problem is who is that option? Right? That's going to be the tough situation, but you'd be a fool to think that he's not currently looking for it. And if there is someone that is available, he will drop Sammy that same instant. The moment we sign someone that can be a replacement, he is getting waived that instant. I honestly think if once wall gets back, he's going to get waived anyways. I think he's going to get dropped down to the HL.

It's a miracle that Jones didn't get claimed off of waivers at the start of the season when we put him on waivers.

I think a lot of teams are kicking themselves over that too. Like, think about it. There's a lot of teams that would want to have Martin Jones the way he's playing right now, but I don't think a lot of people really thought that he was going to play.

And also there was some cap shenanigans with his cap in terms of I don't know what the scenario was, but there was like a hundred thousand dollars payment that had to be made like the day after he got put off of waivers or something like that. So that added incentive not to take him up. But that's hilarious. But cap wizardry right there. But yeah, honestly, if we didn't have him right now, I don't know what our record would be in these last like 15 games with Samsunov and I guess Petrazelli or Hill to be up. It would have been bad. So I'm very glad that Jones didn't get claimed off of waivers. We'll see what happens, though. But yeah, I expect him to kind of go down for a conditioning stint soon enough.

Yes. Now, any other questions that you're looking at? Has anything popped out?

I did see a comment saying that Samsung has like the worst save percentage since the 80s or like 89 90 for the Leafs.

Oh God.

Which beats Vesatoscala at the worst, which is saying something. Considering Vesatoscula is Vesatoscala.

I'm honestly not surprised. Think about how many goddamn goals he's let in just in the last month, right?

Yeah, I hope he figures it out.

And especially when you have hope he figures it out. Yeah, I know, but think about it. Like six goals and 21 shots. Yeah. That's not a recipe for success, right?

Yeah, it's by warrior wamp. He said Ilia Sansono's 862 save percentage is the lowest by elites goaltender through the first 15 starts of a season since Alan Bester in 89, 90. It's the lowest by any NHL goalie through 15 starts since Dan Cluccier in 2006. Oh, my God, that's grace.

Insane stats, by the way. Shout out warrior whopper for pulling that out.

Yeah, I see a lot of, like, fire keef things, which I don't understand.

You're going to fire the guy on his 300th game? 300 game of the season?

Yeah, I bet 300 games. He sits at the highest point percentage of any coach in NHL history at the 300 game wreck, which obviously he would.

You have a great team.

Inherited on a phenomenal team unlike any other coach probably in history. Because generally when you get fired, you're not getting a great team.

Do you have his stats? If you don't have it, don't pull it up. Don't pull it up if you have it. Like how many games he's won and all that.

I have his point percentage up, but. Yeah.

How many games do you think he's won? Ignore it. Okay. Well, you can just do simple math, I guess.

300? No.

Yeah.

Percentage. I don't know, like 100.

I'll give you an over under 85. Oh, my God. There's no way. You didn't look that up.

Was that dead on?

Not dead on, but you were three off. It was 183. Holy shit. What a legend. Yeah. 183 wins, 80 losses, 36 overtime losses. Well, actually 37 now.

And also against bottom seven teams this season. I also wanted to touch on this. We are three, five and three.

Yeah, don't remind me.

Fuck.

Don't remind me.

Against bottom seven teams, we are three, five and three. If we took ot away and just considered them losses, that's three and eight.

Yeah, don't remind me. The Chicago losses where like, half of their goddamn lineup was out and we got shelled.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, no fun.

That's a.

All right, well, if that's all the questions, then I think we'll call it here. I saw someone in the chat talking about how I don't have bedsheets on my bed.

It's because. Are there.

No, that's not a bedsheet. Well, that's a bedsheet. It's not a blanket. I think he was. Yeah. The reason why I don't have my blanket on is because. I don't know if I should say.

If it's a daisy, the.

No, no. I got rid of the lion one, but I think this is arguably worse. Should I pull it up? It's so bad. Especially, like, now that the juniors is going on. I feel like this is sacrilegious.

Is it an american one? Yeah.

Disgusting.

Put that away.

I'm not joking, bro. I think Ruthish is using, or my grandparents are using the tiger one, so I have to use this.

Oh, my God. Why do you even have that? Who?

Ask my parents. I don't know. I've never lived in America. I'm not an american. I'm a Canadian. I love Canada, by the way. But there's a reason I don't have this on my bed right now.

Okay, that's a good choice.

All right, well, that's going to do it here from us. Thank you guys for watching. This has been a long one. We appreciate each and every one of you that stuck around. There's still like 200 of you here. Make sure you hit that, like, button. Make sure you hit subscribe if you haven't already. Like we said, we're so close. Just 1.5k off of the 100,000. So help us hit that milestone and ignore in my blanket. The SDPN is doing a bunch of good content around the juniors, so make sure you tune in after each of the canadian games. We'll have a host along with an elite prospect analyst to take a look at the games. Those have been really fun. Today listed one over the Sweden loss.

Which kind of sucks.

Sucked for Canada. But we've got some more games, so make sure you stay tuned in for that. That's a lot of fun. And as always, we have so much other game overs going on with the other canadian markets and a lot of other content here on the SDPN channel. So hit, like hit subscribe, tune in tomorrow where the Leafs face off against. Who is it the Carolina hurricane? Yes, the Carolina hurricane. And I think it's you and Lauren on for that, right, Armand?

Yes, it is.

All right, so you'll see Armand's lovely face there. Armand, give us your shout outs. Tell the people where they can find you on Twitter.

You can find me at Armand Pantheki, follow me on there and you can.

Find me at harness, underscore Patel. I hope you guys have a great rest of your night. Good night. Game over.