Toronto Maple Leafs: Reviewing John Tavares Debut Season

The Toronto Maple Leafs made the biggest splash in NHL free-agent history last season when they signed unrestricted free-agent John Tavares.

Tavares chose to come home and play for his home-town Toronto Maple Leafs for a cool $11 million dollars annually.

Not only did the Leafs finally get a legitimate NHL superstar to come home, but they created the best 1-2 punch down the middle in the process.

With Tavares and Auston Matthews playing centre for the Leafs, they’ve opened up a window for a potential Stanley Cup that this city hasn’t seen in years (or decades).

So in anticipation of Tavares second season with the Leafs, here is a reminder of just how good he was last year.

John Tavares and the Toronto Maple Leafs

Upon Joining the Toronto Maple Leafs, John Tavares promptly scored career highs in both goals (47) and total points (88).

He scored an incredible six goals in his final seven games to make a run for 50, but it wasn’t to be.

Tavares didn’t win the Rocket Richard Trophy for most goals, but he did something that is technically more impressive:  he led the NHL in 5v5 goals with 33.

It’s harder to score 5v5, and it helps your team more (since roughly 20% of powerplays will end with a goal anyways).  It’s a sincerely great accomplishment. (He was also fifth, with 60 points, in 5v5 scoring).

Here’s an interesting fact: with Tavares and Matthews being arguably the two best 5v5 goal scorers in hockey, if the Leafs get more luck on their power-play they’ll be nearly unstoppable.

For reasons that have more to do with luck than anything else, the Leafs (who were 8th in PP%) managed to somehow score nearly 30 less goals than Tampa did on the power-play.  (All stats naturalstattrick.com).

In total, Tavares finished 3rd overall in goals, and 16th in points.

At 5v5, where it really matters, Tavares put up an impressive 53.29% Corsi, while posting a 59% goals-for rating.  Much like William Nylander, the Leafs were pretty much always winning when Tavares took the ice.

While Tavares will be hard-pressed to match his 47 goals, due to a career high shooting percentage, he won’t have to have Ron Hainsey as his second most paired-with defenseman this year.

Tavares played almost half his minutes with Ron Hainsey on the ice.  When they were out together, they were only a 48% team, while without Hainsey, Tavares put up a 56.5% possession rating.

Some might believe I’m just ragging on Hainsey here, but to be honest, who you play has a huge impact on your success.  By playing almost half his minutes with Hainsey, Tavares was held back a lot, as the stats show.

If we’re trying to judge whether he can repeat his 47 goal season, this is important information.  By upgrading one of the defenseman he  plays with, the Toronto Maple Leafs have put Tavares in a situation to succeed.

His shooting percentage will drop, but he’ll be playing with better players overall, so hopefully he can come close to repeating his spectacular debut season.