Mitch Marner To Have A Better Season Than Auston Matthews?

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.

Matthews or Marner?

Matthews has put up record goal-scoring numbers for the Leafs, with 60 in 2021-22 and 40 last year with an injured wrist. He has topped 100 points once in his career.

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.

Marner's Projected Career Season

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.



As seen on Hockey Feed - "Tough blow on Auston Matthews... thanks in part to Mitch Marner!"