PITTSBURGH — Right around noon on Saturday, Sheldon Keefe was asked about Mitch Marner and delivered a relatively minor, and entirely fair, critique.
Keefe said Marner wasn’t “executing at the level that you’d expect from Mitch,” and hadn’t “found his groove here yet.”
Then, after the Leafs played and lost to Kyle Dubas’ Penguins later that night, Keefe tried to take the sting (however minor it was) out of what he said earlier in the day, including a push for more from the team’s struggling top line.
The Leafs coach referred to the set of reports he got before each game. “One of them I look at is our five-on-five scoring this season and at the top of the list is Mitch Marner,” Keefe said. “Guy here that we say hasn’t played his best hockey, and has all the hardest matchups every single night, yet is at the top of our team in five-on-five scoring. So, it’s interesting how it all works out.
“Let’s not pile on the negatives here.”
Keefe isn’t wrong: Marner does lead the Leafs with 13 five-on-five points this season.
But he also wasn’t wrong to suggest that Marner isn’t playing his best hockey right now and hasn’t all season. The criticism didn’t need softening. Marner is in his eighth season. He’s one of the best (and highest-paid) players in the world. It’s OK to hold him publicly accountable once in a while.
Marner has five goals and 20 points through the first 19 games, and no goals and just three points in the last seven. He’s on pace for 22 goals and 86 points, terrific production for most players but not for someone who performed at a 35-goal, 106-point pace per 82 games the past two seasons.
Even the five-on-five production Keefe mentioned is a little hollow: Seven of those 13 points came in two early November games.
Marner has gone point-less at five-on-five in 13 of 19 games.
He’s just not been the same energetic puck-controlling, chance-creating machine, and defensive stopper the Leafs have been used to having around.
It’s hard to point to anything in the numbers that looks as it should.
Last season, the Leafs had a 25-goal (!) advantage at five-on-five when Marner was on the ice. So far this season, they’ve been outscored by one. They’ve given up more shots (126-136) and attempts (280-285) than they’ve generated (126-136) with Marner on the ice at five-on-five and managed only one more scoring chance somehow (137-136).
Marner owns an ordinary expected goals mark of 49 percent, which would be the lowest of his career.
Last season: 56 percent. The season before that, a dominating 62 percent.
It’s more than that.
Marner is landing the fewest shots on goal per 60 minutes of his career (6.7). A lot of that is due to the power play, where he’s hit the net just six times in 65-plus minutes. He’s playing a new position on that power play, mostly stationed to the left of the crease, where shooting isn’t especially advantageous but still.
Thanks to the NHL’s new tracking data, we can also see that Marner isn’t skating as quickly as he had previously: His top speed of 33.6 kilometres per hour this season is down from last season’s high of 35.6. His shot hasn’t been as hard either, topping out at 141 km/hr compared to 147 last season.
Mitch Marner played 23.5 minutes against the Penguins and was held without a point. (Philip G. Pavely / USA Today)
What’s been most glaring is how pucks have gone awry off his stick. The control hasn’t been there. His passing, usually so precise, has been out of sorts for most of the season. During the Leafs’ first power play of the night against the Penguins, a Marner giveaway deep in the Pittsburgh zone led to a short-handed rush the other way. He could only throw his head back in frustration.
Marner ended up playing 23.5 minutes and was held without a point. He wasn’t made available to the media after the game.
In what’s become a concerning trend this season (after years of dominance), his unit — the Leafs’ No. 1 unit — was outplayed in Pittsburgh. Prior to the game, Keefe said of the line, “They’re not making plays; plays are just dying on their sticks.”
The trio, featuring Marner alongside Auston Matthews and Matthew Knies, was beaten in transition for the Penguins’ first goal. They were mostly one-and-done offensively until the third period.
Keefe admitted to challenging the group after the second period a day earlier in Chicago and was pleased with their third-period response. Keefe said he liked Matthews’ game against the Blackhawks, but added, “I didn’t think he had enough support”.
The glimmers have been there with Marner. Early in the second period in Pittsburgh, Marner poked a puck craftily off the neutral zone boards to Knies, who raced in dangerously. He and Matthews connected in transition a period later.
The Leafs, with some prominent holes on their roster right now, need more of that. They need more from Marner. And it’s OK for the organization, starting with Keefe, to say just that. That Marner hasn’t delivered to the standard they need and expect from him. As Keefe pointed out, the expectations are only this high because Marner set them this high. Expectations are earned that way. Marner, to that point, is the eighth leading scorer in Leafs history.
He’s got lots of time to turn it around this season before another all-important playoff.
After 19 games last season, Marner had a similarly ordinary line of four goals and 22 points. He finished with 30 and 99. It’s time for him to take off again.
— Stats and research courtesy of Natural Stat Trick, Hockey Reference, and Evolving Hockey
(Top photo: Jeanine Leech / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)