TORONTO — When you’re expected to score in the Stanley Cup playoffs, time is rarely on your side.
Just ask Mitch Marner, who arrived back home in this deadlocked Toronto Maple Leafs–Boston Bruins series to a cacophony of debate and discussion about the 0-0-0 entry beside his name on the stats sheet.
It’s Marner’s first time going multiple games without a point since Dec. 30 and Jan. 2. He actually briefly registered an assist during Monday’s win in Boston before video review took it away because Tyler Bertuzzi directed the puck in with a high stick.
No matter.
By both the eye test and underlying numbers, it’s clear that Marner has yet to make the kind of ice-tilting impact expected of someone with his immense talent. He is still looking to stake claim to a big moment with Game 3 on tap at Scotiabank Arena on Wednesday night.
Should the Leafs play deep enough into the spring, it’s inevitable.
He’s been among the most productive players in the NHL for almost a decade. Even with just one goal to show for his past 11 playoff outings, he sits at 47 career points in 52 games.
Of course, the Maple Leafs stand a much better chance of extending this current playoff campaign into May or June if Marner finds his best form — if he commits to playing through contact, works his way more consistently to the inside and transforms back into an elite offensive threat.
Circumstances have made that more difficult to start this series.
With Auston Matthews thriving alongside Tyler Bertuzzi and Max Domi, Marner has lined up alongside rookie Matthew Knies and John Tavares on a second line that adopted a more defensive posture for games at Boston’s TD Garden while seeing the majority of its minutes head-to-head with David Pastrnak.
Mitch Marner has been in a different role separated from Auston Matthews. (Nick Turchiaro / USA Today)
That matchup will almost certainly shift with Sheldon Keefe getting the last line change at home and possibly reintegrating injured winger William Nylander into his lineup. The Leafs coach was no doubt hyper-aware of the growing focus on Marner when he turned a postgame question about Matthews into an answer about his teammate following Monday’s 3-2 win.
GO DEEPER
Where should William Nylander play in his return to the Leafs lineup?
“I thought this is a night here where Mitch Marner, I thought he’s all over the game, too,” Keefe said. “He’s making plays offensively for us at different times. Great defensive plays. He’s playing almost every shift against Pastrnak and doing a really good job helping us there (and on the) penalty kill.”
At this stage of the season, the game is played almost as much between the ears as it is on the ice. Marner expects a lot of himself and will no doubt already be feeling the weight of expectations — both his own and that of the fan base.
He may actually be able to find some comfort in the experiences of champions from recent history. A memorable playoff campaign is basically never dominant from start to finish, which is why Keefe and his staff have taken to reminding the current-day Leafs that they need not strive for perfection.
Consider: Jonathan Marchessault had two assists through seven games for the Vegas Golden Knights last spring and didn’t score a goal until a second-round series against the Edmonton Oilers. He finished the playoffs with 13 goals and the Conn Smythe Trophy.
Sidney Crosby was named playoff MVP during the Pittsburgh Penguins’ championship run in 2016 after enduring a stretch of eight games without a goal that spring — registering only two assists during a second-round series victory over Washington.
And Patrick Kane found himself sitting on two goals through 15 games of the Chicago Blackhawks’ playoff run in 2013 before scoring seven more times in the Western Conference final and Stanley Cup Final, earning the Conn Smythe Trophy in the process.
In Kane’s case, that included a hat trick and double-overtime goal against the Los Angeles Kings to put his team into the Cup Final. That was a monster moment still remembered by many who probably forget how unproductive the first part of the spring was for Kane.
The lesson?
If you win, the points don’t really matter. If you deliver big at the right time, many of the other details simply get lost to time.
If Mitch Marner gets hot, few will remember a slow start to the postseason. (Chris Tanouye / Getty Images)
Matthews had a moment — a monster one — on Monday in what might be the signature performance of his playoff career thus far. The alley-oop breakaway goal he scored on Linus Ullmark late in Game 2 put the cherry on top of a night where he was dominant in the faceoff dot, in the corners, along the wall and around the net.
“What I’ve been impressed with about him is how tenacious he’s been on pucks,” Bruins coach Jim Montgomery told reporters in Boston of Matthews. “How tenacious he’s been on the forecheck. He’s been relentless with his work ethic.
“He’s the most dangerous man on the ice because he’s earned it.”
Marner is a different player — a smaller and slippery winger who knocks opponents off-guard with his vision and hockey sense. But he can be equally as dangerous.
His arrival in the series could be a game-changer for the Leafs.
(Photo: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)
