Toronto Maple Leafs Stats Analysis: How Good Is John Tavares

The Toronto Maple Leafs signed John Tavares.

Everyone is justifiably excited, because the Toronto Maple Leafs have just picked up one of the NHL’s best players, but exactly how good is Tavares?  Where does he rank in terms of the overall NHL best player list?

Last season, his second best in the NHL, Tavares scored 37 goals and 84 points in 82 games.  This is impressive, but in order to find out how good Tavares is, we’ll have to dig down a little deeper.

Last season, for the first time in four seasons, Tavares had a possession rating under 50%.  This, however, is not so bad when you take into account that he was a positive Corsi relative to his team. This means the team did better with him than without him.   In his entire career, Tavares has never been a negative relative corsi.  Bottom line: in the most general sense, he always improves his team.

Last season, played almost exclusively with Anders Lee and Josh Baily, and its a guarantee that the Leafs will not only give him better linemates, but that, with Auston Matthews taking some of the opposing teams defensive attention, Tavares will see easier minutes.   So we can reasonably expect an improvement on the 37 goals and 84 points, which is crazy.

If we look  at the WOWYS from naturalstattrick.com (where I got most stats in this article that aren’t from tweets) we see that Tavares improves almost every player he plays with.   We also see that he was a 65% with Barzel (very small sample size) and a 55% with Eberle.  So , unsurprisingly, he dominates when paired with other elite players.  This bodes well for a Tavares/Marner combo.

Statistical Notes

According to Corsical.hockey,  if you look at the expected-goals (how many goals a player would be on the ice for accounting for luck) over the last three seasons, Tavares ranks third among forwards behind only Crosby and McDavid.

If you check out the following tweet, you’ll see that he is also the seventh highest scoring centre in the league over the last two years.

Tavares is ranked 12th overall in total 5v5 goals over the last three seasons (Matthews, despite playing in only two of those seasons, is ranked 10th).

As you can see above, Tavares is 7th in total goals for the last three seasons.  He did this while playing on a bad team, and being the main guy other teams try to defend against.  You notice the Toronto Maple Leafs have three of these players.  That is, three of the eight centres who have scored 30 goals in each of the last two seasons.

If we look at this chart above, we see that for the last three years, John Tavares is the third best player in the NHL.  GAR – goals against replacement – takes into account a players entire performance and determines how many goals they should have scored vs a replacement level payer.  Only McDavid and Bergeron have contributed more to their team’s success during this period.

84 points last season is good, but it doesn’t jump off the page.  Neither does his 48% Corsi, or his under a point per game career average. But if we look at the total package, it’s clear that John Tavares is not just one of the best players in the NHL – he’s one of the best three to five players in the NHL.

I think it’s pretty clear when you dig deep into the stats that Tavares true worth has been somewhat hidden by the team he was playing on.  With Matthews taking some of the heat, he is likely to explode for his best season yet next year.

Connor McDavid is pretty clearly the best player in the NHL.   After that, Bergeron, Crosby and Tavares,  can be ranked in any order you want to have them.  That’s how good Tavares is.

Next: Top Ten Maple Leafs Prospects

You can make a pretty good argument that Auston Matthews will be joining this group soon.  It’s entirely possible the Toronto Maple Leafs could have three of the five best players in the NHL by the end of next season.

Thanks to @regressian and @corsiihl  for the tweets.

Stats from naturalstattrick, hockeydb, and corsica.hockey