Mar 22, 2021
Marner making the most of superstar minutes
No other NHL forward averages as much ice time as the diminutive Maple Leafs winger, who is proving he can produce despite the heavy workload, Travis Yost writes.
By Travis Yost
Through Sunday’s games, the number of National Hockey League forwards averaging more ice time than Toronto Maple Leafs winger Mitch Marner ticked down to zero.
That strikes me as a fascinating development. Marner has been a blue-chip player his entire career – he was selected fourth overall in the 2015 draft, and has scored at ease since his rookie season. There are few things coaches love more than young, hyper-productive attackers, and it’s one of the big reasons Marner has been given some real latitude over the years.
But the Maple Leafs didn’t get here overnight. Earlier in his career, there were concerns about Marner’s ability to play away from the puck. The diminutive, hyper-agile frame that allows him to carve into dangerous areas of the ice with ease offensively doesn’t necessarily pay the same dividends on the defensive side – smaller defenders are always vulnerable to bigger attackers leveraging their body into scoring areas, as one obvious example.
Whether those concerns were justified or not, it’s clear that Maple Leafs coaches gave it some credence. Marner was sparingly used on the penalty kill in his first two seasons, and his 5-on-5 usage looked more like a middle-six forward despite the scoring.
That’s changed over the past two seasons. Marner has evolved from key offensive piece to the guy who is playing all of the minutes, all of the time. While it’s not lost on me that last season’s coaching change may have accelerated the timeline, the reality is that Marner has been headed in this direction for quite some time, his ice time steadily increasing since the moment he entered the league:
At 22 minutes and 44 seconds, Marner is playing 99th percentile minutes – the type of minutes only given out to elite forwards and defencemen capable of producing results with such significant workload.
For context, consider some comparables: Edmonton’s Connor McDavid is second in total ice time (22:26), with teammate Auston Matthews (22:04) just in trail. He’s also playing just as many minutes as Vegas’ shutdown superstar defenceman Shea Theodore (22:50).
The Maple Leafs carved these additional minutes out on two fronts. The first: the team has thrust penalty-killing duties in his direction, this season arming him fellow winger Zach Hyman. The second: an established and pronounced role on the team’s first line, married to the hip of Matthews.
Anytime a player sees a surge in usage like this, you always want to make sure their productivity stays in relative alignment. Players have to be able to manage through the added fatigue that presents itself in these situations. But Marner has been as productive as ever – his 40 points in 32 games are good for fourth in the NHL’s scoring race, and those numbers would be getting more attention if McDavid wasn’t going supernova again.
Some of the goodness in the counting numbers comes from being an assist factory for Matthews – that’s not a point in dispute. But Marner’s ability to attack off the wing with speed and thread his way into the interior is creating scoring chances in spades for the entire Maple Leafs unit. The shot profile with Marner on the ice this season is especially notable. The Maple Leafs only shoot from the slot and the circles, and they do so relentlessly:
Opinions may vary on Marner, but the Maple Leafs think he is a bona fide superstar. So far, he’s delivering on their belief.