The wizardry of Mitch Marner
How Mitch Marner has quickly become one of the game's greatest playmakers and where he still has room to grow
Since his arrival in the league in 2016 as a 19-year-old, only three players have recorded more primary assists at 5v5 than Mitch Marner: Connor McDavid, Artemi Panarin and Patrick Kane. Narrow that timeline down to the last two seasons and Marner leads the league. It’s safe to say Marner is one of the premier playmakers in the game.
Marner is a wizard with the puck on his stick and makes passes like he’s got eyes on the back of his head on a pretty regular basis.
He seems to have an inherent understanding of where his teammates are going to be before anybody else does. His brain just processes the game at a different level than almost anybody on earth and it’s electric to watch unfold. Marner is the perfect fit for a team which boasts two of the best goal scoring centres in the world.
While it’s one thing to process what’s happening quicker than the players you share the ice with, it’s a whole other thing to be able to execute and exploit the passing lanes as they become available. Luckily for Marner, he has the patience and the incredible hands to pull off the plays he sees in front of him. As a result, whether at evens or on the powerplay, Marner is absolutely lethal from the half wall. In the clip below, poor Lucas Wallmark is tasked with attempting to contain Marner while Wallmark is stickless. The result seems almost inevitable.
Marner is so deceptive and it helps him suck defenders into him. Once the defender starts leaning toward him and away from the passing option, it’s already over. In the clip below, Marner has already made a play with the puck while missing a glove. It’s not really relevant to the story, I just found it funny. He picks his glove up and joins the rush as the trailer and Matthews hits him with a pass in the middle of the ice. The backchecker and the defender in the middle of the ice have to respect the shot because he’s in a prime scoring area and Marner knows it. He receives the pass as if he’s going for the catch and shoot, making the goaltender and two defenders commit to him. The rest is history as Andreas Johnsson receives a gift.
The next clip is pretty similar and you can see the defender, Sami Vatanen, stuck in cement as he knows Matthews is the player at the dot waiting for the pass. Vatanen is forced into the impossible decision of taking away the pass, letting Marner walk in alone on the goaltender or attacking Marner and leaving Matthews unattended. Vatanen hesitates and doesn’t really make a decision at all and Marner does what comes natural to him, resulting in a wide open net for Matthews to shoot at.
Even when there are multiple sticks in the passing lane, Marner can often thread it through. If you’re defending against the rush and Marner is carrying the puck while Matthews and John Tavares are attacking the middle lane, you’re probably just relying on divine intervention.
Marner said in an interview Thursday that he’ll be looking to score more goals himself this year, which isn’t all that surprising considering he shot the puck at a lower rate in ‘19-20 than in any of his first three seasons. Though his calling card is and always will be his passing ability, he can pick corners well enough that he can score himself when the opportunity presents itself
Marner’s shiftiness and world-class hands also help him beat defencemen and goaltenders, sometimes at the same time, when he sets his sights on scoring himself.
All of these tools make him lethal on the powerplay as well and it helps that he’s passing to guys like Matthews, Tavares and Nylander. That powerplay unit is a cheat code.
Marner is also a takeaway artist, ranking 17th in takeaways per hour on the ice at 5v5 over the last two seasons among the 535 players who’ve played at least 1000 minutes during that span. This ability helps his team tilt the ice in their favour and occasionally even leads directly to goals.
As you’d probably guess, Marner is also pretty good in transition, but maybe not to the extent that you’d expect.
In fact, his involvement in transition took a dip this season, but that likely has more to do with playing a lot of his minutes with Matthews, who has become a transition monster himself.
Still, considering his skill-set and being the primary puck carrier on the powerplay, I think Marner has more to give in that aspect. With his passing ability and his vision it would be nice to see him carrying the puck into the zone as much as possible, creating more opportunities to feed Matthews the puck in the middle of the ice upon entry.
For the first time in his career, Marner was fed the heaviest penalty killing minutes on the team and his results suffered. It’s hard to read much into that, though. Marner went from being the second unit guy hopping on the ice while the opposing powerplay was trying to bring the puck back up the ice to the guy starting every penalty kill with a defensive zone draw. It also didn’t help that Zach Hyman took most of those faceoffs and got absolutely caved in. Considering special teams is the area of the game in which faceoffs actually make a substantial impact, the Leafs should probably consider having an actual centreman take d-zone draws on the kill next year. I’d wager they’d be much better off having a guy who can win faceoffs and get off the ice once the puck is cleared than with Hyman losing a disproportionate number of those faceoffs leading to them getting hemmed in the zone against the opposition’s top powerplay unit. Matthews was 55% on the draw last season, for what it’s worth.
That brings us to Marner’s other area of concern, which is his defensive impact at 5v5.
While his strong offensive impact has heavily outweighed his occasional defensive shortcomings, Marner has produced below average results defensively in three of his four NHL seasons by Evolving Wild’s WAR model. Last season, though, his poor defensive results were largely percentage driven. After riding a sky high on-ice PDO in ‘18-19 along with Tavares, both players regressed to the mean this past season. Of the 298 players to play at least 800 minutes at 5v5 this past season, Marner was 281st in on-ice save percentage. Unless you’re going to blame him for not making saves for Frederik Andersen, this was out of his control. The encouraging part is that the team was actually much better at suppressing shots and chances with Marner on the ice.
There is still room to grow on the defensive side of the puck, though, in my view. Marner is an intelligent and tenacious player offensively, but he doesn’t always appear as engaged defensively. One thing I’ve noticed is that he’s often pretty bad at covering for the defence when they pinch. It’s understandable that he’s going to cheat sometimes when put in that position given his offensive abilities, but Sheldon Keefe’s system calls on the defence to be aggressive and pinch often. This means the forwards have to be on their toes and be prepared to cover for said defenceman. Sometimes he just doesn’t seem to be in a rush to get where he needs to be under these circumstances. I’m obviously nitpicking here, but the tools are all there for Marner to become a two-way play driving force with a few minor tweaks to his defensive approach. If he’s able to do so, his 10.9 million dollar cap hit will be well worth it.
The Leafs were extremely fortunate that Marner shared a draft year with McDavid and Jack Eichel, enabling them to draft him with the fourth overall pick after the Arizona Coyotes took Dylan Strome at three. Marner is already arguably the best playmaker in hockey and between aging into his prime and his raw skillset, the potential to unlock another gear is still very much in play.
A treat for sticking around to the end.