John Tavares is trending toward a 37-goal, 74-point season at age 34, in his 16th NHL season — the final one of the seven-year, $77 million contract he signed with the Toronto Maple Leafs on July 1, 2018.
All this after a 2023-24 regular season in which Tavares finished with only 65 points in 80 games, his lowest per-game mark since he was a 19-year-old rookie, and a postseason in which he excelled defensively in a seven-game series with the Boston Bruins but scored only once.
What exactly is going on? What’s spurring this bounce-back season, which actually started with Tavares playing lighter minutes as the team’s No. 3 centre in October before surging in recent weeks? Is it sustainable? And, crucially, how might it impact Tavares and the Leafs in the playoffs?
Tavares had thoughts of his own, which he delved into in great detail after a recent practice.
“I really liked the way a lot of things have progressed over the last couple of seasons specifically,” he said. “Maybe last year at times (the) results didn’t come, but I don’t think that meant my play wasn’t strong or I wasn’t doing a lot of good things.”
A touch more luck
We should start here: After a season of relative misfortune, Tavares is getting some breaks again.
Last season, Tavares shot 10.4 percent, the worst mark of his career. And even that required a late-season barrage that saw him score five times in the final four games.
Most strangely, Tavares, typically one of the NHL’s best finishers around the net, shot only 11.6 percent on high-danger shots, with 18 goals on 155 looks. That was well below the league average of 16.9 percent. And indeed, a season earlier, Tavares scored 27 goals on 169 shots from the high-danger zones, a 16 percent clip.
“I still think the results weren’t bad,” Tavares said of last season. “But did I score as much as I did the year before? No. But where was my game at? How do I feel about a lot of parts of my game?”
In other words, Tavares felt like the process was still strong and the results would eventually follow. They have: Tavares is shooting 13.6 percent so far, about on par with the 13.1 percent he shot before last season. His six goals from high-danger zones ranks in the NHL’s 91st percentile.
His 46 shots? The 99th percentile.
Of note: Tavares is shooting the puck harder than last season, at an average of about 77 kilometres per hour, up from 64 km/hr last season.
Tavares has had minimal effect on the power play so far (three goals and one assist). At five-on-five, however, he’s produced more than normal — 2.4 points per 60 minutes, his best mark since his first year with the Leafs (2.9). He broke a lengthy five-on-five goal drought last week, scoring in back-to-back games.
The Leafs are blasting teams 18-6 at five-on-five with Tavares on the ice.
Great goaltending has played a role — Leaf goalies have a .957 save percentage in those minutes — along with hot shooting, to the tune of 11 percent.
Some regression is probably coming at both ends of the ice.
It’s also keeping in mind that two of Tavares’ 11 goals have gone into an empty net.
But that doesn’t feel like the whole story.
The new-coach bump
The Leafs simply aren’t giving up as much as before with Tavares on the ice. Shots, shot attempts, scoring chances and high-danger chances especially — it’s all down from last season.
The Leafs are surrendering around two expected goals per 60 minutes with Tavares on the ice, which would be the stingiest mark of his career and one of the better marks for a highly used NHL forward this season. (The only Leaf forwards faring better are Steven Lorentz and David Kämpf.)
And that was with Tavares duelling top lines in Auston Matthews’ absence for most of the last month and lining up for a whole whack of defensive zone faceoffs — the most of he’s ever taken.
For the first time in his NHL career, Tavares is holding an offensive zone faceoff percentage under 50 percent — 44 percent, currently.
The team has been thrilled with how Tavares has checked this season and how he’s helped lead the way by buying into new coach Craig Berube’s program. His fit under Berube is a huge part of the resurgence.
“I just try to be adaptable — whatever role, situation, type of style, type of system we’re playing, I can find a way to incorporate my game and adapt to that and be effective,” Tavares said while raving about the job Berube has done so far.
Berube’s desire to minimize risk would seem to benefit Tavares as much as anyone. Because the Leafs aren’t taking chances off the rush, they also aren’t giving up many opportunities the other way, the kind of chances that tended to burn Tavares in the past.
Berube wants his team to play a “heavy” style; forechecking foes hard and grinding them down. It’s a perfect fit for Tavares, who excels at slugging it out down low. “I think, no doubt, probably the strength of my game over my career has been my play below the dots,” Tavares said.
Tavares is spending 42 percent of his even-strength minutes in the offensive zone, according to league tracking. That’s up from 41.5 percent last season and 41.4 percent the year before that.
The Leafs — Tavares included — are still trying to make better use of the time down there, but there’s no question a more methodical game has helped the team’s former captain. It could be more advantageous for Tavares in the postseason, too.
The Marner effect
It’s taken too long to mention Mitch Marner’s role in things. In short, he’d been essential up until the two were broken up in the second period of a Wednesday win over Nashville.
The Leafs have outscored teams 7-1 in the Tavares-Marner minutes, an advantage that would have been even greater had Pontus Holmberg finished some of his many setups from Marner. Again, great goaltending plays a role in that. However, the Leafs weren’t giving up much substance in those minutes, just 1.9 expected goals per 60.
And that’s with the twosome (the third member of the line varied) getting absolutely buried in D-zone draws while facing top competition. The Leafs would like to alleviate some of this pressure on Tavares and Matthews by adding a centre who can eat up some of those difficult minutes.
What now, with Marner hooking back up, to great effect, with Matthews? Tavares gets William Nylander back. The Leafs have won over 61 percent of the expected goals in their minutes this season.
Commitment to evolution and improvement
Tavares can come across as something of a hockey robot, which makes it easy to overlook another part of this: The chip on his shoulder. And that chip is proving he can still be a highly impactful player at this stage of his career.
“I think it’s just the natural competitive element of playing at this level and what you’ve done your whole career, your whole life,” he said. “I haven’t gotten to the ultimate goal of winning the Stanley Cup, and being part of a team and contributing towards that. I think that’s obviously No. 1. And I really feel like we have a special group and a special opportunity for a club like this to try to win one.”
Which meant turning over every possible stone for potential improvement this past offseason.
“How do I continue to evolve my game? What’s been strong? What can I be a little bit better (at)?” Tavares said of his thinking.
“Mostly, it’s using where my strengths are and the base of my game is,” he went on. “But, can I be a little bit quicker getting up the ice on transition, things like that, in the neutral zone? Continue to be really strong below the dots, but is there a little bit more there that I can get better at and create more time and space, be effective, protect the puck a little better?
“I think it’s still always know what your strengths are and try to build on those.”
Tavares said there were many conversations with team personnel as well as the litany of individuals that aid in his training (he mentioned Patrick O’Sullivan, the Leafs development staffer; Paul Matheson, the team’s skating coach; and Darryl Belfry, a former skill development staffer for the team) after the postseason, when he and Marner mostly shut down David Pastrnak’s line but failed to generate much of anything offensively.
Tavares was held without a five-on-five goal all series. This after a 2023 postseason that saw him fail to score entirely (while producing only one assist) in the second round against Florida. The defensive work is critical, but the Leafs need him to produce as well.
I wondered if he thought something had to change.
“I think overall you want to just be able to build a game that is very productive at that time of the year,” Tavares said. “In the last couple series that I’ve played in, the puck hasn’t gotten in at the traditional rate that I have (scored at). But is that really necessary of having to change the process or the recipe? Or just look at a couple things that maybe you tweak here and there. And maybe it’s just, at the end of the day, just having to finish on a few of your chances. I’m not trying to overthink it or reinvent the wheel. But certainly, it’s a critical time of year where you want to make sure that you’re at your best, you’re playing well, and you want to be able to execute because obviously it’s necessary to go all the way.”
Because, as Tavares noted, that’s the whole goal here: The Cup.
— Stats and research courtesy of Natural Stat Trick, Hockey Reference and Evolving Hockey
(Top photo: John E. Sokolowski / Imagn Images)
