How Have the Toronto Maple Leafs Big Four Performed So Far?

Mitch Marner

Mitch Marner is second in the NHL in goals, and second in the NHL in points, prior to Saturday’s action.  The counting numbers are off-the charts and he’s scoring at a 114 point pace.  If you for some reason put any stock into the charisma deficient TV intermission analysis, you’d think that he was playing amazing.

And he isn’t playing badly, but I think he, like his team, has been getting some pretty fortunate results. It is unfortunate that people will think this means that I don’t like him, or that I’m some how saying he is a bad player, or that I have some kind of anti-Marner bias.  Marner is one of the best players the Leafs have ever had. I have waited my entire life for the Leafs to have a player like Mitch Marner on their roster.

I also don’t particularly care about his salary or anything like that.  I am just simply saying that it’s very easy to equate high point totals with great play, and that that isn’t necessarily always the case.  It is especially not the case here.

William Nylander is flirting with a 60% corsi (comparable to batting .400 in baseball) but Marner has the lowest rating of the Leafs Big Four at 51.53%.  Marner is shooting 23% 5v5 and 27% overall.  His PDO is over one-hundred, while the less lucky Tavares and Nylander line is around 98.

This isn’t to say that Marner is playing poorly, he isn’t.  He just isn’t playing at the insane-out-of-this-world level that people are making him out to be.   With a just-this-side-of-positive Corsi, other teams are actually outshooting the Leafs with Marner on the ice.

Here is the difference Joe Thornton made so far (and it is a small sample, but it’s not meaningless):

With Thornton, 52 minutes,  Marner is a 70% player.

Without Thornton, 34 minutes,  Marner is a 44% player.

The fact is that despite his point totals, with Marner on the ice the Leafs are only expected to get 45% of the goals. Whether you accept these stats or not is completely irrelevant:  over the long term it is a 100% guarantee that “expected goals” will better predict the future than “actual goals.”

Now of course there are other factors here – quality of competition (Leafs have played four games against Connor McDavid and Marner plays against him a lot), quality of team mates (Rielly and Brodie aren’t exactly dominating games), no training camp, an insane schedule, etc.

Nobody is saying Marner has been bad.  He’s been good.  But he is a top player in the NHL playing with another top player in the NHL. Whatever the circumstances are he goes up against, the end results can’t be a negative, which they currently are despite the points.

So while the early point totals are nice, Marner has been outplayed by at least two of the Toronto Maple Leafs big four.  Keep in mind that of his 13 points, six are on the power-play and two are into empty nets.