Mitch Marner has been incredibly effective this postseason - when Vegas wins. However when you look at his stats, it's more of the same Marner as we've seen before.
You can't deny Marner's effectiveness and production this postseason, as he has 29 points in 21 games and absolutely a part of the reason Vegas made it to the Stanley Cup Final. However, when you take a look at his stats you start to notice a serious pattern; if Vegas wins, Marner is great but if they lose? He's as invisible as ever.
A lot of the discussion this postseason was centred around whether or not Mitch Marner would become a different playoff performer than he was in Toronto, and from the outside looking in, you can certainly say he has.
His 29 points in 21 games is nothing to ignore, and if there were any doubts from critics you could argue they should be put to rest.
Marner's postseason is much like his Toronto one except Vegas is actually winning
Or maybe it would be jumping the shark just a tad.
Sportsnet revealed some pretty eye-opening stats regarding Marner this postseason and it shows that when Vegas is winning and doing well, he's showing up. But when his team struggles and need him to show up - it's more of the same Marner as we saw in Toronto:
-
In the seven losses he has this postseason he has zero goals and only seven assists. Three of those losses have come within one goal, and if anyone is expected to pick up the slack when things get tough, it would be the league leader in scoring.
This is the time for Marner to prove that not only can he perform in the postseason but he can do it without anyone's help. If the Golden Knights didn't have the luxury of Pavel Dorofeyev, Mark Stone, Jack Eichel, and Tomas Hertl in their lineup, you'd be hard pressed to see Marner taking charge.
He's confident when his team is ahead a few goals, but then when the pressure is put on them he tends to be that 'mousy' player that Jay Rosehill sees him as.
Marner isn't the only one to blame....sound familiar?
Marner scored a hat-trick in less than six-and-a-half minutes but his team needed to go into OT to get it done. He had his chances but couldn't bury them, and Carolina plugged away until it was all tied up.
If he can take over the game that quickly and dominantly in six minutes why couldn't he continue it the rest of the way? He could have had five or six goals and shown flashes of leadership by taking over and finding a way to win.
Eichel has only 8 points in their losses, Stone only has 5, Hertl only has 3 and Ivan Barbashev has 3 as well. So it's not exactly Marner's sole responsibility and even if the Golden Knights were to lose, they can at least make the Hurricanes work for it and pile on the points.
That sounds a lot like the Maple Leafs teams that Marner was on for nearly a decade, as guys like Auston Matthews and John Tavares didn't take over when they needed to and it cost them.
If Marner had been lights out even when Vegas lost then we can't really see him at fault because hey, he's putting up the numbers.
But he's acting like the Marner of old when the game is getting tough, and the Golden Knights can't afford that with only one loss left in their season remaining.
Will Mitch Marner win the Stanley Cup this season?
Also read on Hockey Patrol :
A cryptic Maple Leafs post has fans convinced something is coming at the draft