Toronto Maple Leafs: Mitch Marner, Meet Art Ross
By James Tanner
The Toronto Maple Leafs hype-train focuses on John Tavares and Auston Matthews.
But Toronto Maple Leafs forward MItch Marner might not be relegated to the second tier of Leafs superstars for much longer.
Expect Mitch Marner to breakout this season – bigtime.
The stars are aligning or Marner – he’s in his third year, he’s crazy talented, he gets to fly a bit under the radar because of who else is on his team, and now he’s going to get paired with John Tavares.
Oh, and because Matthews is going to force teams to put their best defenders on him, Marner should see way more second pairing defenceman than a player of his talent could ever dream of seeing.
Mr. Art Ross
Art Ross is no Art Garfunkel (who is?) but he is the second coolest guy named Art that I know about. According to Wikipedia, he invented skating the puck up the ice, instead of just passing it.
Ironically, even though the award for winning the NHL’s scoring title is named after him, he was a defenseman.
Mitch Marner is not a defenseman. He is a right winger. But I think he has a pretty good chance of winning this year’s Art Ross Trophy.
A) He plays with John Tavares, B) he is himself insanely talented and C) he will be the third and sometimes fourth player on the Leafs other teams are concerned with.
This should allow him to put up massive amounts of points.
Last year Marner scored 3.08 points per 60 minutes (all situations). That was 27th best in the NHL and, coincidentally, the same rate Tavares put up. This year they should improve each other’s numbers and face easier competition, so the sky is the limit.
For context, Marner’s 3.08 is just behind Sidney Crosby’s 3.15 and Alex Ovechkin’s 3.16. If you hit 3.5, you crack the top ten.
Did I mention that Marner is at an age where year to year improvement for a player of his level is almost a guarantee?
There are no guarantees, but I predict that a healthy Mitch Marner wins the NHL scoring title. He was already a borderline top-ten scorer before the Leafs got Tavares. Now he is going to go insane.
He scored four points Wednesday night against the Canadiens. I highly doubt its his last four point game this year.
Marner is set to explode, and so if you’re in a hockey pool, don’t hesitate to take him early. If you’re a fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs, don’t hesitate to buy his jersey, and don’t sell him short by ranking Matthews and Tavares ahead of him.
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There is a pretty good chance Mitch Marner wins the Art Ross. If he did, he’d be the first Toronto Maple Leafs player to do so in modern times.