By: Asa Montreaux
When the Vegas Golden Knights acquired Mitch Marner through free agency on July 1st, they acquired one of the best playmakers in the league.
The hallmark of a great "playmaker" is the scoring of assists and contributing to the team overall, and not just pursuing their own individual statistical achievement. Great passers like Adam Oates make a huge difference on a team, and often we can point to playmakers as the great contributors to a goal scorers career, like Backstrom to Ovechkin or Gretzky to Kurri. When you look at the data, it tells you some things that you perhaps wouldn't have expected. Mitch Marner turns out to be a player that generates a lot of goals. Although, he is more productive on the Power play in terms of percentages, than at evening strength, he scores significantly more assists at even strength than other situations. The NHL predominantly plays at even strength, but what is worth noting is that he gets far more primary assists at even strength than other situations.
This shows that he has created the plays and created goals for his team, to help them more perhaps than other players would, to put points on the board, and ultimately win the game. His assist statistics do not necessarily mean that he doesn't create goals on the power play, but it shows that it is more of a team effort, and Marner getting the second assists more often means that it was a group of players that created the goal rather than it being just one player who created the goal. This divide between on the power play, and even strength is exemplified by looking at the difference between when Marner is playing, and when he is on the bench, and his teammates are playing without him. At five-on-five in Marner's career, his team has scored 1000 goals, while he was not on the ice, and 395 when he is. This is a surprisingly high statistic of almost two out to five. It shows that while one player can't win the game, one player creating a lot of plays leads to a certainly higher offensive production. Being a play maker, and not just trying to get a goal can lead to more consistent play, and more seasons with high point totals, and high points per game totals. Marner's Power play goals while he was on the ice, as opposed to goals by the team when he was off the ice, are almost as good as his five on the five statistics, showing that although he has been a player that has played on the power play a lot in his career for Toronto, he still contributes and scores points a significant proportion of the time that he is on the Power play.
Assessing the other aspect of Marner's point totals, we see something interesting about players that make plays and don't necessarily have booming shots. Marner scores a lot more goals, at least percentage-wise, from high-danger areas, then low-danger areas. While Ovechkin seems to be able to score from all over the ice, statistically even being able to score from along the boards - Marner seems to thrive around the net. This may remind you of his assist for Canada on Connor McDavid's winning goal in the Canada-United States game, in the five Nations face-off. Marner being in a five-on-four situation can slightly amplify the effect, so that when he gets to passing and dangling niftily, the number of goals that he scores in a high danger area is amplified.
In the past season Marner scored 27 goals in 75 assists, totaling 102 points. He scored 47 primary assists and 28 secondary assists. 47 primary systems is an impressive total that shows that Marner is a dominating, creative, and important player when it comes to helping his team score points, and not just win by stopping the other team from scoring on them. He joins the Vegas Golden Knights now. Their, last season Jack Eichel scored 94 points and 77 games Mark Stone scored 67 points and 66 games.
Those were there two leading scorers, and by a significant margin. Eichel obviously scored scored a bit more even than Stone, but Stone was injured for part of the season. Eichel averaged 1.2 points per game, while interestingly Stone averaged 1.02 points per game. Marner will be the highest earning point getter in terms of points per game, joining the Vegas Golden Knights next year. Last season he scored 1.26 points per game.
They may make a dangerous first line together, and they will definitely make a very dangerous power play together. Mark Stone often slides in well on the point, as does Eichel, and that will allow Marner to play the half wall where he thrives. Eichel and Stone both have good shots, and Marner will be able to pass to them for one timers that beat goalies, and help the Golden Knights convert on their Power plays. Marner was a good addition that makes the Golden Knights a much more difficult team to beat, and the move adds a player that can generate much more offense for them.
Take a look at the goals Marner participated in, that won the Four Nations face-off, with a look at player-tracking. Both goals emphasize him scoring from around the net, and in the high-danger zone.
