Why have Maple Leafs’ Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner struggled to drive play this season?

Scott Maxwell
Scott Maxwell(scotmaxw)
Dec 14, 2023, 13:37 EST
Why have Maple Leafs’ Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner struggled to drive play this season?
Credit: © Geoff Burke

You might be reading this title and scratching your head a bit. Didn’t Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner just score two goals each in a 7-3 win over the New York Rangers? Why would they be struggling?

The truth is that, offensively, they’re not struggling. Matthews is currently the running favourite – again – to win the Rocket Richard trophy after reaching the 20-goal mark on Tuesday and now has 21 goals and 32 points in 26 games so far this season. Marner isn’t quite matching the pace that he posted the past few seasons, but he’s still above a point-per-game on the year with 11 goals and 29 points in 26 games.

But if you look under the hood, things aren’t quite as good for either player. Both have been dominant possession players in recent seasons, with Matthews ranking third in the league among forwards with at least 1,000 minutes from the 2020-21 to 2022-23 seasons with a 60.48% 5v5 expected goal share, while Marner ranked ninth among the same group with a 58.87% 5v5 xG share.

This season? Matthews has only been just getting by with a 51.82% 5v5 xG share, while Marner has not only been mediocre in this regard, but actually quite bad at 46.17%. Matthews’ numbers haven’t been this low since his first two seasons in the NHL, while Marner’s have never been this bad.

Sure, they’re producing as usual, but you want your best players to be dominating their minutes, especially when they’re getting paid north of $10 million, and Matthews and Marner haven’t been doing that on a consistent basis this season.

It’s even more jarring when you compare Matthews and Marner to the other two superstars on the team. John Tavares is third on the team with a 56.03% xG share while William Nylander is fourth with a 55.75% xG share, with the only two players finishing ahead of them being their regular linemate in Tyler Bertuzzi and Fraser Minten, who played just four games before he was returned to the WHL.

So it seems to be more of an issue with Matthews and Marner. What has them playing so much worse than normal? First, let’s look at their linemates and see if there was a particular player that caused the issue.

Matthews + Marner LinematexGF% together
Tyler Bertuzzi62.9%
Calle Jarnkrok44.43%
Matthew Knies51.7%

Ah, there we go, problem solved. Clearly the issue was their time with Calle Jarnkrok making their play bad, while their time with Matthew Knies has been somewhat middling. Right?

Not so simple. A quick dive into their with-or-without-you stats and it shows that it doesn’t make a difference. Sure, their xG shares get better away from Jarnkrok, but it just increases Matthews to 52.17% and Marner to 48.2%. Meanwhile, Jarnkrok jumps up to 53.4% away from them, so if anything, it’s Matthews and Marner that are dragging down Jarnkrok.

With Knies, it’s not much different. Matthews has a 50.26% xG share away from Knies while Marner is only at 47.89%. The only difference is that Knies drops off significantly away from the duo to 34.35%, but that’s because the only other line he’s been on this season consistently with Max Domi and David Kampf got caved in during their time together, and he’s also a rookie.

Oh, and Tyler Bertuzzi sees his xG share jump up to 65.23% away from this duo as well.

Ok, since it’s clearly not their linemates, so is it the duo themselves? Well, Marner drops to a 37.11% xG share away from Matthews, so that should jump off the page as the problem there, but it’s not even that simple. When Matthews is away from Marner, his rates drop as well, but it’s only to 50.06%, which is still very mediocre for Matthews.

What’s more interesting is that Marner and Matthews’ most common linemate outside of each other and who they’ve played with on the top line so far this season are the aforementioned duo of Tavares and Nylander, who have been doing well. But when you put Tavares with Marner they have a 35.99% xG share together, while Matthews and Nylander together are just 51.45%. So not only are Matthews and Marner not performing well, but they also drag Tavares and Nylander down to their level when paired with them.

In fact, that’s been a common occurrence this season. Out of the 24 possible players Marner has played with this season (including Matthews), only Matthews, Kampf, Knies, Morgan Rielly, Noah Gregor, Timothy Liljegren and T.J. Brodie have seen their xGF share increase when playing with Marner. Kampf and Gregor are the only ones that see a greater than 5% increase, but both have only played around 10 minutes with Marner, so we’re dealing with a small sample size there, and Knies (who’s otherwise played on bad lines) and Rielly (more on him in a minute) see more than a 2% increase.

Matthews at least sees a few more names that he helps out. On top of Knies, Rielly, Gregor, Liljegren and Brodie, his list adds in Marner, Domi, Jake McCabe, Max Lajoie, and William Lagesson that see an increase in their xG shares when playing with Matthews. While Domi and Lajoie have played minimal time with Matthews so far, all of Knies, Marner, Rielly, Brodie and Lagesson see an increase of more than 5% when on the ice with Matthews.

I alluded to Rielly before, and that’s because the trio of him, Matthews and Marner may be the most interesting of the bunch. When the three are on the ice together, they have a 56.02% xG share. Other than that, only one combination of those three on the ice produces an xG share above 47%, which is Matthews’ 53.49% xG share without the either two players on the ice.

So all this talk about linemates and who Matthews and Marner are dragging down, but are there any players that drag down those two?

Of those 24 possible linemates for both players, there is only one instance of Matthews or Marner seeing their numbers improve drastically away from another player: when Marner is away from John Klingberg. That’s right, when Marner played with Klingberg, he had a 31.45% xGF share, but away from Klingberg, that increases to 50.48% for Marner, the only instance where Marner sees his xGF share increase above 50% away from a player. In Matthews’ case, that happens several times since his xGF share is hovering around 50%, but it never rises to the 55-60% level that we’re used to seeing from him.

So after all that, the glaring thing for me is that no matter who Matthews and Marner play with, Matthews still only performs at best to that roughly 50-51% xGF share that he’s hovered around so far this season, and Marner almost always falls to that 46-47% that he’s hovered around so far this season. Not only that, but more often than not they will drag a player down to their level than elevate their play, which is quite rare to see from this duo. So is it just them?

Using the tools we have available to us, yes, it is. The best insight to this is with Evolving Hockey’s Regularized Adjusted Plus-Minus, which isolates their play from other outside factors like teammates, competition, rink bias, etc. Basically, it gives us the best look at how a player may actually be playing. This season, it doesn’t look ideal for Matthews and Marner.

This basically tells us the exact same thing we keep getting told no matter what we look at in this investigation. Matthews has been solid offensively and not great defensively, leading to mediocre play overall in terms of play-driving. On the other hand, Marner has struggled at both facets of play-driving, leading to his weaker numbers.

This isn’t normal either. As I alluded to off the top, Matthews and Marner have normally been some of the league’s best play-drivers, and their RAPM from the 2020-21 to 2022-23 seasons indicates the same thing.

At the very least, they’ve been offensive powerhouses, while their defense has been at worst passable and at best just as dominant as their offense depending on the year.

So why the sudden change? There’s a lot of reasons that we might not be able to quantify. Twenty-six games is still a small sample size to work with, so it’s possible that a bad stretch could have weighed down both of their numbers in the early-going this season. Maybe they’re dealing with injuries or going through off-ice turmoil that we’ll never know about. Maybe they’ve gone to the Tampa Bay Lightning School of Trying Just Hard Enough To Make The Playoffs. Maybe they (*cringes at the thought of using this narrative*) just aren’t competing.

There is one potentially quantifiable answer made by people smarter than myself. Note that this was tweeted before the Leafs games against the Islanders and Rangers.

The Leafs offense has changed a bit this season, and the ways that it has do align with the numbers that Matthews and Marner are producing. As Justin Bourne points out, they continue to be one of the best teams at generating chances in the slot, off the rush, and off the cycle, hence why Matthews and Marner are still able to put up points with their finishing talent. But, they struggle at maintaining that offense for long stretches, and generating chances off the forecheck.

If the Leafs are generating offense at a one-and-done rate, that gives the opponent the opportunity to build on their numbers against the Leafs, especially if they are able to maintain offensive possession.

Then, as Nick DeSouza points out, there are some personnel reasons behind that. As good as Bertuzzi, Knies and Jarnkrok have looked at times alongside Matthews and Marner, they aren’t as strong on the forecheck and retrieving the puck after scoring chances as effectively, which is the main role of the third person on that line. Michael Bunting did it, Alex Kerfoot did it, and Zach Hyman did it before them.

On top of that, some of the new additions aren’t as patient in the offensive zone as past players, resulting in less offensive zone time. More recent Leafs teams had developed a plotting and meticulous offensive strategy, moving the puck around and waiting for the right moment for an opportunity to present itself, something you see more often executed in soccer like Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City teams.

This season, players like Knies, Domi, and Nick Robertson are more likely to force passes into the slot as soon as possible. It’s still a solid strategy, and is why the Leafs still rank a solid 13th in expected goals for per 60 minutes at 2.75. But like in other more possession-based sports like football and basketball, a quicker offense just means you’re providing the other team with more time with the puck to create more chances the other way. Unless you have a good defense that can stifle them and get possession back quickly, that’s a recipe for disaster, and the Leafs haven’t exactly excelled at that with the eighth-worst expected goals against per 60 minutes at 2.83.

Of course, that still begs the question as to why it’s affected Matthews and Marner, and not some of the other players on the team, particularly Tavares and Nylander. Perhaps it suits to the play style of the latter two, or maybe it’s a style that just doesn’t mesh well with the former two being possession-dominant monsters like they always are. The changing offense is not exactly an airtight theory for the answer, but it’s still an interesting change nonetheless.

The Leafs certainly have bigger problems this season, particularly the much talked about need for an improvement on their blueline. But if they can’t get Matthews and Marner’s possession struggles figured out by playoff time, they might run into yet another issue in the playoffs when they encounter a team that will give the duo problems that they just can’t simply outscore.

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