Friday’s FTB: In defense of Cody Ceci

Yesterday Kyle Dubas spoke to the media regarding the Toronto Maple Leafs’.... interesting results so far this season. At the risk of being reductive, a quick summary might be phrased as “sometimes we’ve been bad and sometimes we’ve been good and when we’ve been bad, we’d have really rather have been good”.

He also touched on other aspects of the team, including the performance of some individual players. If you’ve been on Twitter at all in the last 24 hours, you may have already seen this quote floating around:

“[Ceci] seems to be a very polarizing player. It’s been interesting, even when everything underlying about him has been relatively solid, especially when you consider his usage, there seems to be every tiny thing he does becomes a referendum on whether he’s good or not which is mind boggling to me because if that that would have been done by subjective-oriented hockey people in the past, the objective people would have jumped all over it, and now the inverse seems to be happening and Cody seems to be the player that it’s happening about. I think every defenseman who plays that much and plays in that role is going to have mistakes... I think he’s been a good addition for us and has played above expectations from when we acquired him.”

You heard it here first folks, Kyle Dubas is officially anti-analytics.

Okay, obviously not, but for those among us who have spent large parts of this season yelling at their TV every time Cody Ceci touches the puck, this quote was maybe a bit surprising in its verbosity and decisiveness.

Horribly, I agree with him.

Am I happy to have Ceci on my hockey team? ....ok look, happy is a strong word. But now that he is, I am fine with him being here, considering how he’s been playing, the cap factors that went into us acquiring him, and what our other options are. And everything else aside, he is far from being my most pressing concern of all of the additions to the Leafs defence [stares at Tyson Barrie].

Speaking of Barrie, Mike Babcock touched on on him while speaking to the media today:

Mike Babcock on Tyson Barrie: "His hockey sense is elite, so he's got to play loose and driving and jumping... I am betting on him just because of his past and how competitive he is" | Maple Leafs Hotstove

We took a look at Tyson Barrie this summer after the trade, which is worth checking out now if you’re looking for more context on whether or not his numbers this year come down to him being on a new team (or a certain man from Saskatchewan just not deploying him “correctly”):

Tyson Barrie: reconciling the eye-test, the boxcars and statistical models

More recently, Katya took a look at the best goalies in the league:

Naming Names: Who are the elite, the average and the replacement-level goalies?

Sportsnet has posted their quarter-season grades for the Leafs:

Maple Leafs quarter mark report: Toronto learning that the struggle is real

Sidney Crosby underwent surgery, and looks to be out for at least six weeks:

Crosby has surgery, a look into the science of sports hernias to see what he’s is dealing with

And finally, to end on the best note possible, I give you very large man with very large dog: