Since Auston Matthews was drafted in 2016, he has undoubtedly been the Leafs' best player. With his new contract, Matthews has the highest AAV of any NHL player. With that comes some expectations.
New predictions from ESPN have projected Matthews to score 99 points this year. Which is, for all purposes, a great number. However, it is their projection of Mitch Marner that tells the true story.
ESPN has Marner projected to score 102 points, 3 better than Matthews. Marner has never put up more than 100 points in a regular season, getting as close as you can get last year with 99. While these are just projections, and 3 points are marginal, it is interesting to see ESPN projecting Marner to do better than Matthews this year, especially after Matthews' contract was announced.
Marner and Matthews have completely different styles of games, Marner being more of a distributor and Matthews a power scorer. If Marner is able to outpace Matthews in scoring this year, it will be interesting to see how his next contract talks go.