So far in this series, the Toronto Maple Leafs have leaned on the likes of Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews heavily. Now it’s on John Tavares to show up.
Given the Toronto Maple Leafs won’t have the last change in Tampa, the match-up game is liable to change, and this is where John Tavares can show value for his $11 million salary.
Right now, the Leafs captain isn’t offering anywhere near the same value for his salary as the likes of Marner and Matthews.
In Tampa, that absolutely needs to change if Toronto are to take hold of this series and really put the boots to the Lightning.
Favorable Match-Up Can Only Help John Tavares and the Toronto Maple Leafs
Of course, all of this shies away from the fact that the Toronto Maple Leafs matched the John Tavares unit against the Lightning’s leading shutdown group, centred by the highly underrated Anthony Cirelli.
This in turn allowed the likes of Matthews and Marner on the Toronto Maple Leafs top unit to feast on the less defensively-minded group centred by Steven Stamkos.
With the last change, you have to imagine the Tampa Bay Lightning bench will be doing everything he can to ensure his best shutdown group is iced against Matthews.
In turn, this frees John Tavares up and he needs to absolutely perform up to his pay grade against Steven Stamkos.
On pure box score statistics, John Tavares is still a performer; he was practically a point-per-game player in the regular season finishing up with a very tidy 27 goals and 76 points. However, in this playoff series thus far, his only real standout statistic is his faceoff winning percentage at a gaudy 78.6%. Other than that and getting in the way net-front, he has been stifled.
This means that Game 3 is absolutely his chance to make his mark on this series.
Whatever the case, one point from John Tavares thus far in this series isn’t reflective of the salary he’s earning. He needs to build on his faceoff dominance so far and ensure he’s offering point contributions too. He needs to show the Toronto Maple Leafs he is worthy of his elevated salary simply put!
John Tavares gives the Leafs one of the best 1-2 centre combinations in the NHL, and an elevated performance by the captain will be one of the key factors, should they end up going on a long playoff run.