Auston Matthews – the best player in Toronto Maple Leafs franchise history – is off to a poor start to his season, on a strictly results-based analysis.
With just one goal in seven games, the Toronto Maple Leafs best player and reigning Hart Trophy winner is not scoring, but that is of no concern.
Matthews leads the NHL in 5v5 shots, and is 3rd in total shots. He is playing at a 65% xGoal pace, and his team is dominating his minutes consistently.
The goals will start to go in, and this isn’t a problem.
No, the problem is with the Leafs other MVP candidate.
Not his play, but how the coach deploys him. It’s like the Leafs don’t even know what they have.
Toronto Maple Leafs and Mitch Marner
Last season, after returning from injury in January, Mitch Marner went on to score at a 52 goal pace and score at a pace higher than Connor McDavid ever has over a full season.
He led the NHL in points, 5v5 points and was 4th in goals.
He was the NHL’s best player from the middle of January until the Leafs were eliminated.
Though Matthews ultimately won the Hart Trophy, had Marner done for the entire season what he did for the last three months, he might have won it instead. He was that good.
Now, there is no doubt that Matthews and Marner have excellent chemistry.
But I believe that pairing them together fails to take advantage of what they can offer separately.
NHL superstars can make average NHL players into stars, but when you pair two players who are already stars together you risk having to deal with the law of diminishing returns.
Each player is already so good that the addition of another star player only makes them slightly better. It seems to me that they would help more separately than together.
It is at least possible that in the game of hockey, pairing two superstars together is a losing strategy. If the Leafs moved swapped Nylander and Marner, they would then have an MVP candidate on both lines.
Last season, Auston Matthews helped a 25 year old rookie who Arizona didn’t want put up one of the best 5v5 seasons the NHL has seen in 20 years. Bunting scored more 5v5 points than Connor McDavid.
If this kind of star-assisted upgrade is possible, why pair Marner and Matthews? It is much harder for a team to face 2 x lines that feature an MVP than just one line that features both of them.
Mitch Marner only has 13 shots so far this year. That isn’t even 2 x per game, and he scored at a 53 goal pace for half of last season. If he isn’t so concerned with giving Matthews the puck, he’s a better player. (stats naturalstattrick.com).
The Toronto Maple Leafs need to unleash the beast. They need to let Mitch Marner off the chain and let him act like he’s the best player on the ice. When he isn’t acting deferential to Matthews, Marner himself is capable of winning the Hart Trophy.