How Mitch Marner has fared with the Vegas Golden Knights

When you run into your ex, odds are you don’t want to see them thriving without you. And while Mitch Marner’s short time with the Golden Knights hasn’t gone poorly, there should at least be a mild sense of relief from the fact that things went much better for him in Toronto.

To be clear, I can’t imagine anyone in Vegas is complaining about Marner and there are a lot of numbers that are close to or at career bests. If you look at 5v5 on ice differentials, Mitch is having one hell of a season:

All data current prior to Monday’s games

While none of the differentials are career bests, they’re almost all in the top three best results Marner has had in his career. A driving factor behind a lot of that comes from Marner having the best against results of his career at 5v5. Not to give too much away on how that is happening is that Marner is primarily being used on the second line. Marner’s defensive play and opportunity to create offence is benefitting from being behind Mark Stone on the depth chart.

Marner has been moving around the lineup or it’s probably better to say that there is movement throughout the top six, but Marner has played his most significant amount of time with Tomas Hertl and Pavel Dorofeyev. Following that duo, Mark Stone, Ivan Barbashev and Brett Howden have all seen more time with Marner than Jack Eichel, who is the de facto first line centre, and player that Marner has shared the ice with for 118 5v5 minutes so far this season. After Eichel, Marner has the second most minutes played of any forward on the Golden Knights, and surprisingly the area where Marner has seen his time on ice cut the most in Vegas is on the penalty kill.

Given that Marner isn’t seeing 5v5 time with Eichel, it’s worth noting that the duo have ideal 3:43 ATOI on the power play this year. Marner has picked up 16 points on the power play, good for fifth on the Knights, but his two goals with the man advantage are still two more than Eichel has netted this season.

Marner’s results have been more about even strength, where he leads the Knights. He’s sitting at 35 even strength points, three ahead of Eichel, who still has a 56-51 point lead over Marner, with Marner playing seven more games than Eichel.

As far as who has been setting up Marner and who Marner is setting up, it is far more spread out than the results Marner had on the Leafs, where the Auston Matthews/Marner connection was far more automatic. Mark Stone has assisted on four of Marner’s goals with Ivan Barbashev assisting on three. These are somewhat interesting results given that they aren’t Marner’s most frequent linemates.

If there is one more interesting thing worth noting about Marner’s time in Vegas, it’s that recently he has been playing centre, something the Maple Leafs have avoided for the past decade. It’s somewhat confusing why the Maple Leafs were willing to entertain the idea of Marner on defence more than they were willing to entertain him at centre, but the Golden Knights shockingly think that this 200-foot player is more capable in the pivot role.

While Marner’s offence might be down, the Golden Knights are getting what they want out of him, it is still just the regular season. He might not hit 100 points, but he’s been driving the second line and is adding value as centre depth in William Karlsson’s absence. The Knights are presently tied for first in their division with three games at hand on the Oilers and should comfortably find their way into the post season. The hockey played after game 82 will likely determine if Marner is a success story but 44 games, Marner has been a success but not one that should haunt the Leafs.

Data from Natural Stat Trick and Hockey Reference