Mitch Marner is officially out of the Leafs gray practice jersey (reserved for players out of the lineup), indicating an imminent return from injury.
In the 12 games Marner has missed with a high-ankle sprain, the Leafs have amassed a 7-4-1 record. They are third in the league in goals per game, averaging exactly four goals per night despite the second-worst power play at 10.3 percent. Unsurprisingly, they led the league in 5v5 goals with 41 during Marner’s absence.
They have done all this with several absences beyond Marner, especially on defense, plus a collection of sick players. The Leafs have received offensive contributions across the board:
| Player | Games played | Goals | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Auston Matthews | 12 | 9 | 19 |
| John Tavares | 12 | 5 | 14 |
| William Nylander | 12 | 6 | 11 |
| Max Domi | 12 | 1 | 10 |
| Tyler Bertuzzi | 11 | 7 | 9 |
| Matthew Knies | 12 | 2 | 7 |
| Bobby McMann | 12 | 5 | 6 |
Matthews has formed a line alongside Bertuzzi and Domi, a trio that is up 9-6 in goals at 5v5 with excellent underlying numbers (62.44 of the shot attempts and 67.9 percent of expected goals). We could put together a packed highlight reel of all the instances when this line has been stonewalled on an excellent scoring chance during this recent stretch of play.
Naturally, the team’s success, coupled with individual success, has led to questions about where exactly Marner should slot in the lineup when he returns (expected on Saturday vs. Montreal).
First and foremost, it’s important to remember how dominant Matthews and Marner are together, including this season. They are up 42-24 in goals at 5v5 and have controlled over 54 percent of shot attempts and 55 percent of expected goals in just under 690 minutes together. Most nights, they do this while matching up head-to-head against the opponent’s best line. Those are elite numbers.
In February, they each scored 20 points, tied for third in league scoring (Nylander was second with 21, and McDavid was first with an outrageous 27 in 12). Matthews-Marner is one of the best duos in the league, and their dominance shouldn’t be downplayed in this conversation.
However, in the playoffs, the numbers have cooled off considerably.
| Playoff | 5v5 Goal Differential |
|---|---|
| 2020 | 0 |
| 2021 | +2 |
| 2022 | +3 |
| 2023 | +3 |
Other than the first season, those are generally decent but not great numbers at 5v5 over short series. Additionally, the Leafs have played them heavy minutes every season to the point where they are less effective rather than more productive as the playoffs progress (the lack of production in games 6/7 is well documented, and both of them were effectively shut down vs. Florida the only time they’ve been to round two).
The power play has generally been ineffective each year (something we touched on last week). They haven’t possessed significant scoring depth to justify spreading out the minutes, although you could have argued the same about this team through January until injuries and absences forced the coaching staff’s hand. It turned out that other players can, in fact, contribute offensively.
Let’s compare Matthews-Marner’s playoff results to the top forward duos of the past five Cup winners at 5v5:
- Ryan O’Reilly and David Perron were up 13-4
- Nikita Kucherov and Brayden Point were up 24-11 (2019-20)
- In their second Cup win, Kucherov and Point were up just 15-10, but the Lighting PP clicked at 32.4%, and with Andrei Vasilevskiy in net, they allowed just 1.96 goals per game.
- Nathan MacKinnon and Gabriel Landeskog were 18-9
- Jack Eichel and Jonathan Marchessault were a ridiculous 19-6
It doesn’t seem like much, but when we average those goal differentials across four series, those duos are generally in the +2-3 goal range. Matthews has 31 points in 30 playoff games the past four seasons, while Marner has 30 in 30. It’s not as if they have been blanked; the big issue is their production in series-deciding games and mediocre work on the power play.
Complicating matters for the Leafs is that—unlike those Cup-winning duos—they don’t have a top-flight defense core to support them or an elite defenseman to pair them with. In Toronto, it’s not Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner alongside Cale Makar, Victor Hedman, or Alex Pietrangelo.
To find a Cup-winning defense core similar in makeup to the Leafs’ current group, we would have to look at the back-to-back champion Penguins rosters. They ran seven deep in their first Cup win with Ian Cole, Ben Lovejoy, Brian Dumoulin, Kris Letang, Olli Maatta, Justin Schultz, and Trevor Daley. The second year was roughly the same group except Ben Lovejoy left in free agency, Kris Letang was injured, and Ron Hainsey was added to the fold. It’s not a precise comparison, but we can see the similarities between those Pittsburgh units and the calibre of the Leafs’ current defense core.
More interesting—and relevant to today’s discussion—is how those Cup-winning Penguins teams deployed their forwards. In the first year, the Penguins split up their top three stars—Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Phil Kessel—across three lines. Each star drove a line, and Kessel feasted on weaker matchups on the third line (leading the Penguins in scoring with 22 points) with his linemates Nick Bonino (18 points) and Carl Hagelin (16 points).
During Pittsburgh’s second run, with a weaker defense due to Letang’s absence, they loaded up by pairing Malkin and Kessel for the whole playoffs. There are multiple ways to win a Cup.
The question for the Leafs, in particular, concerns the best way to build three lines. They have continually tried a top-six/bottom-six model that has not worked, and there’s little evidence to suggest it will work this time, either.
When Bruce Cassidy was in town last month, he noted that the Leafs’ three-line attack at the time made them harder to defend and advocated for the benefits of three lines in the playoffs.
A few weeks later, we saw the opposite play out as the Oilers tried to load up their top line against a shorthanded Leafs team. The Leafs—vocal about it after the game—rallied around the Oilers’ decision, focused on shutting them down, and ultimately won. It was a reversal of roles; this is often how the opposition has matched against the Leafs and their top-heavy lineup.
Toronto’s third line has been a revolving door of options this season. In the first half of the season, the coaching staff experimented with all sorts of combinations, including David Kampf centering Matthew Knies and Max Domi, which eventually led to Domi’s move to center, where he played largely with Nick Robertson and Calle Jarnkrok.
The Robertson – Domi – Jarnkrok line was a bit better, but it was still difficult to feel good about them. They weren’t good enough defensively and didn’t produce enough offensively to justify the risk. Their current third line is in a similar boat with Knies, Pontus Holmberg, and Robertson – something Keefe acknowledged is not likely to be a playoff line (and for good reason).
The team’s hottest run in February largely featured a balanced look across three lines. Matthews and Marner were still paired, but Nylander drove one line with Domi and Bertuzzi while Tavares centered Bobby McMann and Robertson. This gave the Leafs three credible lines even with Tavares—the oldest member of the Leafs’ core—asked to carry a line rather than one of the team’s prime-aged stars.
Matthews and Marner have been good enough in the regular season to justify keeping them together, but they haven’t been lights out in the playoffs to justify reuniting them with no questions asked – especially when we factor in the decent sample size of a Matthews line performing very well without Marner or Nylander on it.
The simple math of the situation is that instantly placing Marner back on the top line – which has been excellent without him – and then bumping a weaker player to a still-weak third line doesn’t net out as a better team. On the other hand, the top line remaining very good while elevating the third line to also very good nets out as a much better team.
The alternative scenario is pairing the Matthews-Marner duo together again and requiring truly elite production at playoff time to justify it – something they’ve yet to manufacture – while also cobbling together a third line that is at least solid enough for the coaching staff to trust. Will they accomplish this goal with some combination of Domi, Jarnkrok, Knies, Robertson, Holmberg, or even McMann? To this point, they haven’t really been able to.
The combination of the above reasons is why it’s worth at least exploring the look of a three-line attack. With Tavares on the third line, it was a good glimpse, but it wasn’t maxed out; Tavares can’t exactly drive a line at this point in his career. Even still, the general concept of this strategy flashed promise and was generally effective despite some warts.
This doesn’t mean we should never see Matthews and Marner together in the playoffs – this would also be silly. In the Leafs’ last game against Tampa, they scored one goal on the power play. It would have been nice to pair up Matthews and Marner in the third period while down 3-1.
They will also remain together on the power play throughout the game and probably in key situations (end of periods, certain faceoffs, etc.). The conversation is often framed as a binary either-or, but the optimal scenario is more of a hybrid situation.
The obvious benefit is the trickle-down effect throughout the lineup. We can see what elevating within the lineup has done for Domi’s game. McMann has emerged as he moved up the lineup and shared the ice with better players. Last season, a similar effect was seen with Calle Jarnkrok, who moved up to the top line and produced his first 20-goal season of his career at 31 years old.
There is more than enough quality among the Leafs’ forward group to build three really good lines supplemented by a fourth line that is coming into its own over the past few weeks following the trade-deadline acquisition of Connor Dewar. There is more than one way to achieve the three-line goal, and the Leafs have several combinations available to get them there.
Marner’s return will have a positive domino effect down the roster no matter what the coaching staff does. But the name of the game is optimizing the forward group with Marner to make this the strongest overall Leafs team possible in the 2024 playoffs.
