Projected 57-point production: Auston Matthews clearly misses Mitch Marner

Mathis Therrien
Projected 57-point production: Auston Matthews clearly misses Mitch Marner
Credit: Screenshot/Twitter

I don't know if you knew this, but things are really bad for the Toronto Maple Leafs this season.

The Leafs sit in 15th place in the Eastern Conference with their 16-15-5 record, and 37 points in 36 games.

Craig Berube's team is playing for little more than .500, which is clearly not good enough for a team like the Leafs.

With five points separating them from the final playoff spot, a turnaround is easily possible in the second half of the season, but for now, nothing is going right.

And what's even more worrying for Toronto is how captain Auston Matthews is holding up.

The Leafs' #34 is having a horrible season by his standards, with just 23 points, including 14 goals, in 31 games.

That's a very low output that would give him 57 points at the end of the season if he doesn't miss any more games, and therefore plays 77 games in total this season.

With 23 points, Matthews is only the Leafs' 4th leading scorer, tied with defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson.

He has 17 fewer points than William Nylander (40 points in 32 games), while playing only one fewer game than the Swede this season.

And when you compare Matthews' production to the Canadiens' players, Matthews would be the Canadiens' 6th leading scorer tied with Noah Dobson, and two points behind Juraj Slafkovsky.

In short, it's a pretty drastic freefall in terms of Matthews' performances, despite the fact that he had been accustomed to extraordinary seasons of more than a point per game since the start of his career, in addition to scoring countless goals.

But what could have happened?

The simple answer is the departure of Mitch Marner.

It doesn't get much more obvious than this, as Matthews is having the worst season of his career, right in the first season that Marner is no longer playing alongside him.

Marner's departure for Vegas has greatly affected Matthews' performance, and it shows on paper, but also on the ice.

Matthews is no longer the same confident, threatening player without #16's vision and passing.

For his part, Marner has 38 points, including just nine goals, in 35 games with the Golden Knights, which isn't impressive either, but is definitely a lot better than Matthews.

Let's see if the Leafs can bounce back by the end of the season without Marner, but for now, it's looking really bad for Craig Berube's troupe, who fired an assistant coach this week.


Overtime

– Coming up.

– Not to be missed tonight.

– Good news for the Islanders.

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