Auston Matthews without Mitch Marner: the importance of a playmaker

The fun thing about worrying about who is going to pass the puck to Auston Matthews is that no matter who you suggest, the answer is going to be an underwhelming option to Mitch Marner. The suggestions of Max Domi, Matias Maccelli, or even William Nylander all come with a drawback, and with limited cap space and limited potential trade partners, any answer given will be scrutinized.

Over the past three seasons, Mitch Marner has assisted on 50% of Auston Matthews’ goals, that number drops to 44% when only looking at even strength non-empty net goals). That doesn’t seem like a completely irreplaceable number. And in context, Matthews was less dependent on Marner for assisting on his goals than Leon Draisaitl was on Connor McDavid by 6%.

Assists on Matthews goals in all situations 2022-23 to 2024-25:

Matthews had 11 unassisted goals over this time span.

Assists on Matthews goals at even strength from 2022-23 to 2024-25:

That’s a pretty substantial drop-off from Marner to the rest of the Leafs so here’s a bit of context when it comes to playing time and here are the skaters that have been on the ice with Auston Matthews for at least 5% of his even strength ice time over the past three seasons:

The context around ice time starts showing where players like Nylander, Domi, and Tavares have some capacity to fill the gap. And someone like Matias Maccelli certainly seems capable of emulating what Domi does as well, but arguably when it comes to consistent talent level and potential style fit, William Nylander seems like the best choice but comes at the expense of the Leafs being top heavy on their offensive production, though the Leafs would likely take the trade off of a drop off in John Tavares’ even strength goal production for the chance to maintain Auston Matthews’.

When looking at the Leafs moving on from Marner you can find optimism in how Alex Ovechkin was able to keep on trucking after Nicklas Backstrom had his career derailed by injuries. Neither Evgeny Kuznetsov nor Dylan Strome fully replaced Backstrom but have had serviceable runs alongside Ovechkin, and that’s what the Leafs need to shoot for with moving on from Marner. William Nylander is more than capable of being the Kuznetsov type replacement, while the Leafs continue to look for Strome or Pierre-Luc Dubois type options that round out their top six and could potentially present better fits.

Not all players are necessarily going to respond the same way and you can point to the drop off in production seen in Steven Stamkos after Martin St. Louis retired until Nikita Kucherov and Brayden Point emerged as replacements as a potential parallel to a goal scorer that needed elite partners in crime.

There is also something to be said for the Oates vs. Janney effect.

Adam Oates was Brett Hull’s setup man for two seasons before getting dealt in the third, and the Hull and Oates combo was responsible for Hull’s 72 goal, 86 goal, and 70 goal campaigns. After Oates’ departure, Hull’s best season was 57 goals, which doesn’t sound like an ideal outcome and obvious step back, but Hull remained a top ten goal scorer in the league for the next three seasons, and his significant numbers decline coincided with his mid 30s, when a production drop off seems reasonable.

Oates would go on to have an absolutely bonkers 92-93 season with 97 assists, where he set up no one player in particular, but then played a big role in Cam Neely’s 50 goal in 49 game campaign. The Oates and Neely combo was huge and Neely had 11 goals in 13 games in the previous season as well as nine in nine in 1991-92, but not all of his success should be hung on playing with Oates as he had two 50+ goals to his name immediately preceding Oates’ arrival in Boston.

The interesting part of the pre-Oates Neely results in Boston and the post-Oates Hull production in that Craig Janney was the centre Neely had before and Hull had after. The Oates for Janney (and Stephane Quintal) trade shows the impact of having a premiere playmaker vs. a very good playmaker on an elite goal scorer. I’m not sure how many scoring takeaways from the 80s/early-90s NHL are universal, but Leafs adjusting expectations to Matthews as targeted for 40 goals rather than trying to count on him for 50 might be a lesson to be learned here, as well as it would be bold to consider options like Maccelli or Domi to be Craig Janney level. If we’re making this comparison Nylander would likely be the closest in-house option the Leafs have to a Craig Janney level playmaker but with the added bonus of being a legitimate goal scorer in his own right.

What is also interesting is that while last season was Marner’s most dominant offensive year, finally eclipsing 100 points and setting a career best of 75 assists, it was not Matthews’ best goal scoring season. It did see more frequent Marner assists on Matthews goals (20x or 60%) which is really more of a tale of Matthews’ drop in production than it is either player particularly relying on the other more or less last season.

Matthews goals by season since 2022-23: