Mitch Marner's choice to leave Toronto Maple Leafs paying off for him so far
The Toronto Maple Leafs’ offseason talk this past spring was dominated mostly by one man: Mitch Marner.
After nine years on the team and with a shot at becoming the franchise’s leading scorer, Marner opted to take his talents elsewhere and find a new home.
Technically, Marner actually ended up with his current Vegas Golden Knights team via a sign-and-trade, but he pretty clearly played a part in exiting the Leafs.
Fast-forward through one quarter of the Leafs’ season, and they’re much closer to the bottom of the NHL than the top. Marner’s Golden Knights, meanwhile, sit fourth in a jam-packed Pacific Division, but just two points off the division lead.
At least in the early days, it seems like Marner’s choice to pick a new home has been paying off in dividends, given that the Leafs look like a shell of their former selves this season.
How has Marner been doing away from the Leafs?
Marner is currently tied for 34th in NHL scoring, with 20 points in 18 games by way of four goals and 16 assists. It’s unfair to say that he’s having a career year or anything, but he’s still on track for his eighth-straight point-per-game season.
He’s had more multi-point games (eight) than one-point games (three) or scoreless games (seven), so it’s safe to say he’s been capable of putting up big nights on his new roster.
Marner’s 1.11 points per game is actually the lowest it’s been since his second year in the league. One such explanation could be that he hasn’t quite found his legs on the Vegas power play yet. Despite a career-high of over four minutes per game on the man advantage, he’s picked up just four points at extra so far.
Given that he had 33 points on the power play a year ago and picked up a career-high 36 in 2022-23, that’s one area of his game that still has room for improvement in his new digs.
Interestingly, Marner is behind three former Leafs teammates in league-wide scoring, with William Nylander (26), John Tavares (24), and Matthew Knies (22) all having higher point totals in the early stages. Offensively, the Leafs haven’t had much trouble without Marner at all, with the fifth-highest goals total in the league.
But given that just about every player in the NHL would rather play for a winning team than a losing one, it’s hard to imagine Marner missing Toronto all that much these days.
Have the Golden Knights been using Marner like Toronto did?
In some sense, yes: he’s playing 21:01 on average per night, the fourth year in a row that he’s hovered between 21 and 22 minutes per game.
While he’s technically listed as on the team’s second line most nights, he’s playing more minutes than any other forward not named Jack Eichel.
Conventional wisdom might suggest that Marner would be paired up with Eichel as Vegas’ second-highest paid player, and they’d be racking up the points like he once did in Toronto alongside Auston Matthews. But that hasn’t been the case, with 60 per cent of his shifts so far this season away from Eichel.
Of Marner’s 16 assists, 10 have come on goals scored by Ivan Barbashev, Pavel Dorofeyev, and Kaedan Korczak, the first two of whom have produced solid offensive seasons in the past, but are hardly household names to your average NHL fan.
His 84.21 individual points percentage at even strength is higher than any season he’s had in Toronto. In other words, if there’s a point scored while Marner’s on the ice, there’s a higher than a four-in-five chance that he’ll be on the scoresheet.
With Marner still having the vast majority of his eight-year contract to be played out, we’ll be sure to revisit his decision for years to come. But in the first few weeks of his first campaign from Toronto, he’s definitely coming out on top when it comes to who benefited more from his departure.
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