Toronto Maple Leafs: Don’t Judge Players By Production

The Toronto Maple Leafs made the Columbus Blue Jackets question their NHL street cred on Tuesday afternoon.

The Toronto Maple Leafs played a complete, some would say nearly perfect game in game two, and would be hard-pressed to dominate an AHL team to such a degree, let alone an NHL one.

Demonstrating decisively how luck-based the NHL standings are (the two teams were, improbably, tied) the Leafs took things to another level on Tuesday and will be looking to ramp up the momentum tonight.

Unfortunately, the game cost the Leafs Jake Muzzin, and the though that ultimately means more ice time for Cody Ceci, I think the team is deep enough to overcome this rather unfortunate injury.

Now on to the Mitch Marner stuff.

Goals and Points Are No Way To Judge a Player

One of the biggest advantages that teams have been able to make using analytics is the avoidance of recency bias.

Simply put, that means they do not make big decisions based entirely on recent history.

An example of how this might work is as follows: A player in his late 20s has a career season that dwarfs anything his previous career has even suggested is possible, and enters free agency immediately after.

David Clarkson, whose shooting percentage exploded at the perfect time, cashed in on a famously terrible contract in just such a situation.

By using  stats like shot-attempts, scoring chances, expected goals etc. you can build up large sample sizes with small amounts of data and make a more accurate prediction about the future than you can when you just look at goals.

David Clarkson’s recent performance, as measured by goals, suggested a player worth $7 million dollars.  A look into the underlying numbers, all of which have a large sample size and thus a much smaller margin for error, would have revealed the folly of giving Clarkson the contract the Toronto Maple Leafs gave him.

Which brings me to my point:

Through two games   Mitch Marner has a 68% Corsi,  66% shots-for , 72% expected goals, 78% dangerous chances . (stats naturalstattrick.com).

If he were to some how keep those numbers up, he would literally be the best player in the NHL and score 150 points.  Those are just absolutely bonkers numbers.   A player tilting the ice that much is going to have a large scale impact over time.

It makes no sense to complain about Marner’s lack of production because even if you aren’t noticing it, the Toronto Maple Leafs are destroying the opposition every time Marner hits the ice.

Sure, I will concede that he hasn’t looked as out-right electric as we know he can, but in the vast majority of times, a player posting those numbers is going to break out.

The point here is do not judge a player just by his goals and assists.  Mitch Marner could have had a five point game on Tuesday, but it didn’t break that way.  A closer look at his numbers shows a very effective player due to break out.

In the short-term, judging players by their production (goals and assists) is almost always going to result in misguided and incorrect analysis.