TORONTO — If you ever find yourself someone who speaks about you the way Jon Cooper speaks about Mitchell Marner, do yourself a favour: Don’t ever let go.
“The one thing about Marner is, he’s as smart a player as this league has not only seen this year, but has ever seen,” said the Tampa Bay Lightning head coach last month.
“Somebody that can elude defenders and do the things he can do with the puck on the offensive side of it, it translates to the D side as well.”
In one magical burst during this stargazing affair that meant nothing beyond a fun night at the rink — or, maybe, that means everything? — Marner flexed the wizardry he can whip up both without the puck and with it.
Tipping a D-to-D pass Tampa tried to complete in its offensive zone in the first period, Marner proceeded to hunt the loose puck down, win a battle, hustle up the left flank on a 2-on-1 with John Tavares, and look right at his goal-scoring decoy as he sniped far glove on the Vezina-contending Andrei Vasilevskiy.
He punctuated his career-best 26th goal of 2018-19 with a joyful fist pump and flashed that familiar smile as he got swallowed in a group hockey hug by Tavares and Zach Hyman — the most productive line in the Eastern Conference.
“I’ve done it a couple times in practice against Fred [Andersen] and [Garret Sparks], but I never really shoot on 2-on-1s, so I thought I’d try it,” Marner said, making good on the home fans admission fare, despite a 3-1 loss.
“Usually, that’s a hard save for goalies, I wasn’t trying to look at him so he couldn’t really see where I was looking and luckily it got through him.”
Marner wisely bet on himself this critical contract season, declining to negotiate an extension while there was still magic to make, and much has surrounded the 21-year-old because of it: an agent-fuelled sidebar that sapped some attention away from friend and roommate Auston Matthews’ signing day; a “master troll job” (Leafs GM Kyle Dubas’s term) on Twitter by Round 1 assignment Brad Marchand; and some public pleas from Marner’s father, Paul, that his son is due a little more respect.
Luck, however? That hasn’t factored much into the equation, unless you count coach Mike Babcock partnering the line-driving winger with an elite finisher in Tavares, but Tavares is just as fortunate.
We can recall serious debates being waged in this city not so long ago over who’s the second-best young Leafs forward, Marner or William Nylander (with the assumption that Matthews is No. 1).
Marner has 20 more goals than Nylander this season. He has as many goals as Nylander has points.
Something else: Marner has now put up 93 points in his platform year and can add to that Saturday during the finale in Montreal. Mats Sundin reached 94 points during his most productive season (1996-97) as a Leaf. There’s a bronze statue of that guy outside the arena.
“He knows where the puck’s going before the puck knows where it’s going,” Cooper said Thursday.
“That’s why he’s so deceptive. He can curl up, and no matter how hard you try to check him when he curls up, the puck just stays on his stick. His vision, his hockey sense and all that — we’re blessed, we’ve got a couple of those guys on our team [too].
“And when you have stars, it elevates your team. We’ve got a bunch of them, and so does Toronto, and Mitch is one of them.”
The Tavares impact and his fixture on Line 1 are obvious, but a couple other wrinkles have emerged in Marner’s game.
That he approached defence coach D.J. Smith and requested to join the penalty-kill unit was a significant sign of leadership and growth, and Marner had flourished in the role because, he says, he thinks like an offensive player and knows what they hate.
After his three takeaways Thursday, Marner is now top-10 league-wide in the category, with 78.
Don’t be surprised if he appears (lower down) on some Selke ballots.
The other thing, which he showed Thursday, was his increased eagerness to shoot, to resist his pass-first instinct and keep ’em guessing.
As a rookie, Marner took 176 shots (fifth on the team). Last season he fired 194 (fourth). He has jolted to 231 this season.
“I thought he was a star,” Babcock said. “He is a good hockey player. He makes good plays. He plays without the puck really, really well. In these big games, he is always in the right spot and knows how to play.”
Babcock nearly heaped as much praise on Cooper and the Lightning operation Thursday as Cooper did on Marner.
“You can coach all you want, but if you don’t have players…” Babcock said. “So, he’s managed those players, they’ve done a real nice job keeping their players, they’ve done a real nice job of getting their players to buy into whatever their salary structure is, and they’ve added and added and added, they’ve drafted and scouted and added more players. Every time you see their prospects it looks like they’ve got more coming.
“That, to me, is the sign of what he has done. He’s done a real nice job, and he has won year after year.”
Because Toronto is trying to mimic that model, the mind immediately leaps to Marner’s impending payday and how it’ll fit into Dubas’s salary structure.
Marner has not only paced one of the hockey’s scariest offences in scoring in back-to-back seasons, but he was far and away the most productive Maple Leaf (nine points) against the Bruins last spring.
It’s difficult to imagine the impending RFA’s stock rising any higher than it already is.
It’s foolish to assume it can’t.
from Sports - Sports Canada - Google News https://sprtsnt.ca/2OPtUGh
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April 05, 2019 at 11:24AM
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