The Toronto Maple Leafs downed the Pittsburgh Penguins on the strength of a three point night from Michael Bunting.
Toronto Maple Leafs forward Michael Bunting registered 23 goals and 40 assists for 63 points in 79 games last season. (Stats from hockey-reference.com)
As talented as Bunting is, he greatly benefitted from playing with the Toronto Maple Leafs two biggest stars. The main reason he got to play with Matthews and Marner was his ability to hunt down pucks and feed them scoring chances. For some reason, that chemistry has not been working as well this season.
The last couple of games have seen coach Sheldon Keefe mix and match his lines as he tries to get his best line from last year going.
For the game against the Penguins, this meant Bunting back on the first line with Matthews, but this time, with William Nylander on the right side, instead of Mitch Marner.
For one game at least, it paid off.
Toronto Maple Leafs Mixing the Lines
Michael Bunting is on an expiring contract with an AAV of $950,000 and will become an unrestricted free agent this summer.
After scoring 63 points during the 2021-22 season, are the Toronto Maple Leafs afraid Bunting will price himself out of Toronto? It is a possibility.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have been hesitant to offer term or big paydays to non-star players. It is entirely possible that Michael Bunting follows Zach Hyman, Freddie Andersen, Ilya Mikheyev, Connor Brown, Kasperi Kapanen and Andreas Johnson out of town once a new contract comes due. (Or in the case of Kapanen and Johnson, shortly after).
Then again, it’s entirely possible he stays.
The fact is, while Marner and Matthews helped Bunting break out, nobody else, including Zach Hyman, has ever had a season like that playing with those guys. If it was as automatic as dressing any player with Matthews and Marner, then Bunting’s 50+ point 5v5 season wouldn’t be so remarkable.
It is key for the Leafs chances this year that Bunting live up the expectations he created last year, and scoring twice last night is certainly a good start.
Bunting had only two goals and four assists for six points in 16 games before scoring twice and adding a helper last night.
For one game, at least, he was back with Matthews, and it will be interesting to see what Sheldon Keefe does next. Both the top lines scored at 5v5 last night, which hasn’t been happening frequently enough.
If Bunting can get hot, the Leafs are a much better team.