Toronto Maple Leafs: 5 Names That Will Prevent a Bunting Calder Win
The Toronto Maple Leafs have another Calder Trophy nominee in their midst in Michael Bunting. However, he won’t be another winner like Auston Matthews.
Unfortunately for Michael Bunting and the Toronto Maple Leafs, there are two many reasons why the Calder Trophy goes to either Trevor Zegras or Mortiz Seider instead of Bunting.
All of this despite Bunting have the highest points total of any NHL-defined rookie this season. The key there being the NHL-defined element.
You see, he hasn’t played enough games in either of his previous NHL seasons, nor met any of the other criteria for ineligibility and thus is a deserving candidate.
Frankly, if he doesn’t win the award, you can make a strong argument for the league to re-assess how it defines rookies. Again.
His loss of the award though won’t be solely on his age; there’s two Toronto Maple Leafs players among the five names that will prevent him from winning it.
Those five names, in my mind at least, are: Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, Artemi Panarin, Nathan MacKinnon and Moritz Seider.
Of those names, only one is nominated as a finalist for the award with Michael Bunting. The rest; well, there’s a myriad of reasons why they have or may have impacted voting.
Starting with the wildcard name on that list; Colorado Avalanche center Nathan MacKinnon. He won the Calder Trophy in his rookie year with 24 goals and 39 assists for 63 points in 82 games.
For the Toronto Maple Leafs this season, Michael Bunting had nearly identical statistics; 23 goals and 40 assists for 63 points, albeit in 79 games.
So straight up, you can make an argument that on a season-to-season comparison Michael Bunting is the equal of at least one Calder-winning season.
However, the argument here comes when you look at those two players dates of birth. MacKinnon was born September 1st, 1995; Bunting was born 16 days later on September 17th that very same year.
The age difference between the two and having the same season statistics is key here. Michael Bunting achieved those points totals as a 26 year-old, MacKinnon did it as a teenager.
Moving on to Artemi Panarin; another previous winner of the Calder Trophy and in large part the reason eligibility rules have been changed in recent times.
The league at the time didn’t see his time playing in the KHL as a boon to his rookie NHL status. He was after all in his first NHL season when he put up 30 goals and 47 assists for a 77-point year with the Chicago Blackhawks in the 2015-16 season.
Michael Bunting upon arriving with the Toronto Maple Leafs was an AHL veteran with 323 games in the minor league to his name. People can make the argument that this should count as experience in a professional league, much as the rules changed to prevent a repeat of the Panarin decision.
The reason Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner make that list of five; well, they’ve been the most regular Toronto Maple Leafs line mates of Michael Bunting.
Having that duo by your side, especially in the form they’ve been in this past regular season, should make for guaranteed success.
Of course, we know better than that. After all, Nick Ritchie was the guy that started the season alongside this duo and we all know how that panned out. It still takes skill to be able to play with skill players and Bunting should be judged accordingly.
Not everyone can step up and play an effective game with such elite players. He has managed to thrive though and for that, he absolutely deserves the credit.
Finally, the only proper reason why Michael Bunting is highly unlikely to win this year’s Calder Trophy and that is Detroit Red Wings defenseman Moritz Seider.
The NHL is an incredibly challenging league to enter as a rookie defenseman, not least as a rookie defenseman on a team still in a rebuilding phase.
Finishing fourth in rookie scoring with a 50-point campaign as a defenseman is remarkable enough in itself. Perhaps the more impressive part of his year has been just how much the Red Wings have come to rely on him – he averaged 23:02 ice-time per game in his rookie year.
Among rookies playing on their team’s penalty-kill, he also ranks fourth this season, averaging 1:53 per game playing short-handed.
He also led the league in rookie powerplay time with 237:01 total time, amounting to 61.7% of the Red Wings’ total powerplay time this season and notching 21 powerplay points in doing so.
To accomplish all of that as a defenseman, realistically makes him a far stronger candidate no matter how Toronto Maple Leafs fans look at it.
Absolutely, Michael Bunting has has a tremendous campaign and does indeed lead all rookies on points. However, the odds have to some degree been stacked in his favour ever since he fought his way onto Matthews’ line.
Moritz Seider in Detroit has literally been told that he needs to become the leader of a blue-line that is still very much a mosaic of veterans and spare parts on a team that wholly doesn’t represent a finished product yet.
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His challenges outweigh those that Michael Bunting has overcome this season and thus as much as we hate to see it, the Toronto Maple Leafs won’t be adding another Calder Trophy winner to its’ record books.