Stop me if you’ve heard this before: The Leafs have lots of rookies.
The Leafs’ youth movement isn’t news. Toronto’s rookies producing well isn’t even really news, either. Between Auston Matthews, William Nylander, Mitch Marner, and even Connor Brown after his four-point performance against Florida, it’s like the Leafs’ rookies are taking turns lighting the lamp.
What might be news to you, though, is that several of these rookies are within reach of breaking a record older than they are.
The current record for most points in a season by a Leafs rookie is held by Peter Ihnacak. He set the record during the 1982-83 season at the age of 25.
The amount of points Ihnacak scored to set the record: 66.
Can any of this year’s Leafs rookies beat that?
Connor Brown is obviously quite the long shot at the moment. At his current pace of seven points through 17 games, Brown projects to score 33 points, only half of Ihnacak’s rookie record. It’s a long shot but if he keeps turning in four-point games he might have a chance.
Matthews is currently third in rookie scoring on the Leafs if you can believe it. With 12 points through 17 games, Matthews projects to score 58 points this season. That’s eight points short of Ihnacak’s record, but certainly within striking distance.
I’m going to go ahead and assume you’ve heard Matthews hasn’t scored for 11 straight games. It’s kind of a story. I also assume you’ve heard that Matthews scored six goals in his first six NHL games, including four goals in his first one alone. It’s a fair bet that neither stretch is a realistic indicator of the kind of career he is going to have.
Matthews leads the Leafs with 65 shots, 15 ahead of second-place James van Riemsdyk, and 39 of those shots have come during this 11-game goalless drought. Once the drought ends, I wonder if Matthews can start chasing Ihnacak again.
Nylander has had similar offensive struggles over the past few weeks, but catching Ihnacak is well within his grasp. With 13 points in 17 games, Nylander projects to score 62 points this season, just four shy of Ihnacak’s record.
You might’ve noticed that Nylander only has one more point than Matthews, but projects to score four more points. At just 17 games in, less than a quarter of the way through the season, a point here or there can really fluctuate your pace.
Finally, there’s Marner in all has flashy glory. At 16 points in 17 games, he is one point behind JVR for the team lead in scoring. More importantly to the rookie race, Marner is on pace to score 77 points this season, which would smash Ihnacak’s record for rookie scoring by a Leaf by a whopping 11 points.
Marner would need just 50 points over the “final” 65 games of the season to match Ihnacak’s record. I say “just” because 50 points in 65 games is surprisingly well below his current scoring pace.
Actually, Marner’s seven goals right now put him on pace for 33.7 goals this season. If you round that up to 34 (yes I’m well aware that’s not how goals work), then Marner would tie Wendel Clark’s record for goal-scoring by a Leafs rookie.
Now there are two enormous asterisks to all of this:
- These point projections are just the current pace these players are on. They can heat up or they can cool down.
- These point projections are for if these players play in all 82 games this season. If they get sick, injured, or hey, even if they somehow earn a healthy scratch this season, that takes a chunk out of their potential production.
Will one of the Leafs rookies beat Peter Ihnacak’s record? The best part about rookie records is you only get one shot to break them.
Imagine if the record gets broken this season and the new Leafs record is 67.
