Of all that is unusual in this unusual Maple Leafs season, nothing is stranger than this: The Leafs are scoring more goals without Mitch Marner than they did in their first-place season of a year ago.
They are scoring more per game without Marner, the 100-point winger traded away by his choice, and with a relatively absent captain Auston Matthews, which makes no sense at all.
Toronto finished in first place in the Atlantic Division last year with 108 points and Marner in the lineup. But right now, the Leafs are on pace heading for an 82-point season, a drop of monumental proportions.
But they’re scoring more. Go figure.
And their penalty killing — one of Marner’s strengths — is slightly better without him on the team.
What has changed in a season of significant injuries, lack of performance outside of John Tavares and William Nylander, goaltending shuffles and extreme pressure internally and externally is the number of goals the Leafs give up.
Last season, Craig Berube’s team found a defensive style of play. It worked in particular because of what Chris Tanev brought to the lineup.
This year, without Marner — an upper-echelon defensive player — and with Tanev out for most of the season, they are giving up 3.6 goals a game. That’s up almost a full goal from a year ago.
And oddly, what’s happened with the Vegas Golden Knights?
Marner isn’t lighting it up there. He was fifth in NHL scoring last year, but he was 33rd as of Saturday morning. Vegas is scoring a percentage less than they scored without Marner. And they are giving up a touch more in goals against than they did last season.
It is, of course, early. That’s what every player and every team says when life isn’t going their way. You can’t lose a player such as Marner and not feel the immediate need to properly replace him. But the Leafs are scoring more and losing more and looking less like a team of consequence — and all the while trying to make the next quarter of the schedule look better than the first.
U.S. Olympic hockey team hurting already
Tough times for Team USA, the Olympic version. Matthews isn’t playing because of his latest mystery injury. The usual Norris Trophy candidate, Charlie McAvoy, isn’t playing in Boston. Connor Hellebuyck, the defending Hart and Vezina Trophy winner, isn’t playing in Winnipeg. Jack Hughes had too much silly young fun at a Devils rookie party and isn’t playing in New Jersey. And Matthew Tkachuk has not played a game to date for Florida. The Olympics aren’t until February, but the best thing going for Team Canada right now is the athletic disarray among the best of America’s players … Another odd Leafs statistic: General manager Brad Treliving picked up Nicolas Roy, Dakota Joshua and Matias Maccelli to add some depth up front. He especially wanted — as did coach Berube — an identity third line. He hasn’t got that so far and, combined, the three have scored just seven goals … And this is unusual also: Morgan Rielly may be having his best offensive season with the Leafs while he continues with his inability to play, think and react defensively in his own end. Most seasons before this one, Rielly gets at least 38% of his points on the power play. This year, he has picked up 87% of his points at even strength. He has just two power-play points in limited time this season. When he scored 72 points in 2019, his best offensive year, 21 of those came on the power play … So who had Morgan Geekie in their hockey pool and how come nobody mentions him for Team Canada? All Geekie has done the past two seasons is score 49 goals. He’s Charlie Simmer-like. He doesn’t look much like he knows how to finish, but he has more goals the past two seasons than Nathan MacKinnon, Matthews, Nikita Kucherov, Sidney Crosby, Artemi Panarin, Mikko Rantanen and a long list more than that. Geekie’s Bruins have gone from last place to first thus far this year … The top four scorers in the NHL are MacKinnon, the kids Macklin Celebrini and Connor Bedard and Connor McDavid. All four of them are Canadian. All four of them are first overall picks in the NHL draft. That never happened in the Wayne Gretzky-Mario Lemieux years as Gretzky was never drafted because of the WHA merger of 1979.
Blue Jays talk just won’t go away
It’s been three weeks since Game 7 and it’s still hard to escape the heartbreak of just how the Blue Jays lost the World Series. It seems everywhere I go, every restaurant, every meal, I’m surrounded by Blue Jays talk. Breakfast: Why didn’t Isiah Kiner-Falefa take a larger leadoff in the ninth inning? Why didn’t the coaches take into consideration that Daulton Varsho was hitting and he rarely lines the ball down the third-base line? Lunch: Why did Kiner-Falefa slide on a force play at home rather than run through the base? Why didn’t Varsho bunt with IKF on third? Why didn’t Jeff Hoffman throw a fastball to Miguel Rojas after striking out Kike Hernandez in the ninth inning? Dinner: How did the Jays lose the series when they hammered great pitchers Shohei Ohtani and Blake Snell, who started four of the seven games for Los Angeles? … The questions are still so many that I’m avoiding restaurants for the time being, which isn’t my way. Everybody still wants to talk baseball, now. And maybe forever … Give the Dodgers credit for coming back to win the Series: They trailed 4-2 after seven innings in Game 7. The next six batters were 4-to-9 in the order. It didn’t look promising. But Max Muncy hit a home run off Troy Yesavage, who had thrown 11 previous innings against the Dodgers, giving up just one home run. Rojas then hit a ninth-inning home run to tie the game 4-4, with Hoffman on the mound and two outs away from a parade. Hoffman had been near-perfect in his previous 10 playoff appearances. Before that, the Dodgers scored a sixth inning run off Chris Bassitt, who has been perfect up to that point in the playoffs. All of that came before Will Smith hit the 11th-inning homer off Shane Bieber to eventually win the game. The Dodgers weren’t hitting much in the series, but they scored in the sixth, the eighth, the ninth and the 11th innings to win the Series. Do that and you deserve your championship … The right pitchers were chosen by the Jays. The right pitchers didn’t deliver … What John Schneider needs to lose in the off-season is not the manager-of-the-year award but his constant use of profanity. What he says in the clubhouse, to his players, to his team, is private. What happens in the clubhouse stays in the clubhouse. Where Schneider has tripped up is in his pre-game and post-game interviews — which are shown on television and repeated elsewhere — or in his hallway celebrations where his swearing may seem momentarily charming but not upon further review. He’s too good and too smart to be this foul-mouthed publicly. He needs to clean that up next season … Josh Naylor didn’t care to test free agency much, he wanted to stay with the Mariners so he signed a five-year deal in Seattle. Bo Bichette has said he wants to stay with the Blue Jays. But he’s out there playing the market. If he truly wants to stay in Toronto, all he has to do is pull a Naylor. A five-year deal or longer would be waiting for him rather than allowing the market to dictate your terms and your team and time for the coming seasons.
Brandon Ingram the Raptors’ new Kawhi, sort of
The season before Kawhi Leonard was traded to Toronto, he played just nine games with the San Antonio Spurs. That made him available. Masai Ujiri picked him up because he believed he was still a great player. The same methodology was used in acquiring and eventually signing Brandon Ingram last season. He played only18 games with New Orleans and looked like he might be finished. The Raptors identified that they couldn’t find a player like him anywhere else — a shot-maker such as Leonard, DeMar DeRozan or Vince Carter. It’s a pretty short list from the history of the franchise. Ujiri traded for Ingram, signed him for what seemed to be too much money and now look at where the Raptors are. First in the division, 11-5 after 16 games, which is almost as good as the 12-4 they were in the first 16 games Kawhi happened to be a Raptor. Are the Raptors championship contenders? Probably not. Are they Eastern Conference contenders this season? Absolutely. Ingram has changed the team in a different, yet similar, way that Leonard shaped his one season in Toronto … This should be the shortest Canadian athlete of the year meeting in history. You say Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s name, followed by leading scorer in the NBA, league MVP and championship MVP with Oklahoma City. And the Thunder has followed that up with a 15-1 start to this season with SGA scoring 31 points a game. Any questions? Can we vote now? … This should be SGA’s second Northern Star Award, the first since Joey Votto to do that. Gretzky has four. Some others who have won two or more: Crosby, Jacques Villeneuve, Ben Johnson, Sandy Hawley and figure skater Barbara Ann Scott, who has three … Former Argos players Mike O’Shea and Orlondo Steinauer had no interest in being the next head coach of the football club. The likely next head coach should come from a list of current assistants Mike Miller and Pete Costanza, former Argos coach Kent Austin or current CFL assistants Noel Thorpe or Marc Mueller, grandson of Ron Lancaster … Almost everything about the Grey Cup was great — the game, the halftime show, the scene — just not the television broadcast, which kept cutting out. I thought my cable was cutting out until I figured out that just about everybody across Canada was having the same problem. Might have been nice to announce during the game they were having some kind of technical issue. It would have calmed my house down.
Max Scherzer’s next stop: San Francisco?
It is not yet official, but it’s expected that Max Scherzer will sign with the San Francisco Giants where his long-time pal, Tony Vitello, is the new manager. Scherzer will long be remembered for his moments with the Blue Jays. Even if it just one year, it was a year to remember … How is it that Tavares is a better captain of the Leafs when he’s not wearing the ‘C’ than he was when he did? Reminds me a little of the Gary Roberts years in Toronto. He didn’t wear the ‘C’ on his jersey, but he was the clear leader of that hockey club … When you do this kind of work, you try not to play favourites. But every once in a while, somebody changes your view. Edwin Encarnacion was that way as a Blue Jay. He was someone I always cheered for in my mind. He left that kind of impression on just about everyone he met. Now he’s up for the Baseball Hall of Fame for the very first time. He had a great career, just not enough to be Hall of Fame worthy. I have a vote, and it’s going to be difficult to not include Encarnacion on my ballot. If he gets just one vote this year, and he won’t get many, you’ll know where the vote came from … The Colorado Avalanche have MacKinnon and Cale Makar, two all-time greats in their lineup. The Edmonton Oilers have McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, two all-time greats in their lineup. The Avalanche has the best record in hockey, scores 4.2 goals a game and gives up 1.7. The Oilers have struggled, scoring 2.95 goals per game and giving up 3.65. Last year, when the Avs needed a goaltender, they picked up two in about 10 days in late-November and early-December. The Oilers, in need of a goaltender last year and this year, have picked up no one, Management matters … It’s pretty much expected there will be some kind of baseball lockout prior to the 2027 season and some kind of basketball lockout prior to the next WNBA season, which will be the first year of the Toronto Tempo …Happy birthday to Yvan Cournoyer (82), Jacques Laperriere (84), Billie Jean King (82), Ross Stripling (35), Gabriel Landeskog (33), Owen Power (23), Saku Koivu (51), Nick Backstrom (38) and Greg Luzinski (75) … And hey, whatever became of Michel Petit?
