Sheldon Keefe Calls Out Star Forward After Rough Start to the Year

However, the team is looking to get more out of one of their key players after his relatively slow start to the season has become a problem.

Of the core-four, Mitch Marner has probably had the most disappointing start to the season. Auston Matthews and William Nylander have both been fantastic while John Tavares is playing his typical consistent, very good game.

Marner however, seems to be struggling a but more. The 26-year-old winger has a very respectable 20 points though 18 games, but just five goals to show for his efforts. Marner has always been more of a playmaker than a goal scorer, but apparently the Leafs are asking for more from him.

Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe believes that Marner has not been playing up to his full potential this season. As such, he made an interesting statement about his star winger.

Marner is currently on pace for 23 goals and 91 points. That kind of production is more or less exactly in line with career averages, although he has scored more goals in recent years.

He has been criticized for some untimely turnovers this season, but overall his takeaway to giveaway ratio is exactly 1 to 1 which is also more or less in line with his career average.

He is a -2 which would be the worst rating of his career should it hold, but the Leafs have gotten subpar goaltending in many games this season and plus minus is a flawed stat in general.

The statistics seem to show then that Marner is playing just fine. He has proven that he can be better than this for sure, but his play certainly is not the reason the Leafs are struggling.

As seen on Maple Leafs Daily:
Keefe publicly criticizes Mitch Marner's play; he won't have to walk back his comments under Treliving