The end of an NHL season signals dramatic playoff battles, but it also opens the door to the achievement of individual milestones and single-season records. While the hockey world focuses on Alex Ovechkin’s chase of Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goals record, other marks are being hit across the league. Just this past weekend, Kiefer Sherwood of the Vancouver Canucks set a new single-season league record for hits.
In Toronto, league records aren’t necessarily being set, but some noteworthy benchmarks are – or are in the process of – being achieved. John Tavares recently reached the 30-goal plateau for the seventh time in his career, Matthew Knies notched his career-best 25th of the season last week, and Bobby McMann is now an officially certified 20-goal scorer in the NHL. Even Auston Matthews, whose 27 goals represent an underwhelming total for the reigning 69-goal scorer, is three away from a ninth 30-goal campaign (one behind Mats Sundin for the franchise lead).
While round numbers are nice and all, true growth is demonstrated through reaching new personal heights as players, and several Maple Leafs look poised to do just that. Let’s look at four Toronto Maple Leafs who are on the cusp of setting new statistical high-water marks for themselves.
Mitch Marner (Points)
One way or another, Mitch Marner is going to cash in this summer when he becomes an unrestricted free agent – that much is guaranteed. Still, it sure would be nice for his camp to hit the open market coming off the best statistical season of his NHL career, no? Marner remains on track to do just that, although it could come right down to the wire.
With 64 assists (which ties him for third in the league) to go along with 22 goals, the 27-year-old now has 86 points, 13 shy of his career-best 99 that he set in 2022-23. That means he’ll need 14 points across the team’s final 11 games to hit the century mark in points and reach a new career milestone. Appropriately enough, Marner’s current pace of 1.23 points per game projects 13.5 the rest of the way, putting him right between matching his own personal points record and surpassing it.
William Nylander (Goals)
You can’t say that William Nylander isn’t consistent, at least in terms of scoring goals, anyway. For two straight seasons, he has scored exactly 40 goals while playing in exactly 82 games. Doing so for a third straight season, however, would amount to something of a disappointment, as it would mean going goal-less over the season’s final 11 games.
By reaching the 40-goal plateau with a two-goal showing in the Maple Leafs’ 7-2 thumping of the Philadelphia Flyers in what was game No. 71, Nylander has inadvertently invited comparisons to last season. The 28-year-old Swede also scored his 40th goal with 11 games remaining, but failed to register another one the rest of the way. Realistically, the same fate shouldn’t befall the star forward a second season in a row.
Chris Tanev (Blocks)
You have to go all the way back to Ron Hainsey in 2017-18 to find a Maple Leaf who blocked more shots than the 165 that Chris Tanev has amassed thus far in his first season with the club. And assuming that Tanev surpasses Hainsey’s total of 169 that season, he looks poised to challenge Carl Gunnarsson’s 2013-14 mark of 176, the franchise single-season record for blocked shots since the league started tracking them in 2005-06.
While this is rather uncharted territory for the Maple Leafs, these kinds of blocked shot totals are nothing new for the 35-year-old blueliner. Just last season, he blocked 207 shots, becoming one of only 34 NHL players to reach the 200-mark in a single season. At Tanev’s current pace, he would fall just short of 200 blocks. However, he remains poised to tally his second-highest single-season block total in what has been a decorated 15-year career.
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Anthony Stolarz (Wins)
Amidst the many ebbs and flows of the 2024-25 season, the Maple Leafs’ goaltending tandem of Anthony Stolarz and Joseph Woll can still be considered a success to this point. At 28 games played and 27 starts, Stolarz is surpassing his workload of past seasons, albeit not to an egregious extent that sparks concerns about his durability. Woll, meanwhile, has looked comfortable taking the next logical step in his path towards being a starting NHL goaltender. Most importantly, both men have boasted impressive numbers while helping make goaltending a strength of the club.
Woll has already played in 12 more games than his next-highest season total, so it’s no surprise that he’s doubled his career-best wins mark (24 to date this season), all the while improving on his career numbers (2.74 goals-against average and a .907 save percentage this season). And now, despite being sidelined by a knee injury for most of December and January, Stolarz is on the cusp of setting a personal wins mark of his own. After earning his 15th win of the season against Philadelphia, he will tie his career-best mark with one more win and surpass it with two more.
To make clear the obvious, none of this carries any significance if Toronto can’t turn around its track record of playoff futility. But with the neck-and-neck battle atop the Atlantic Division rendering the Maple Leafs’ playoff picture clear as mud, it seems like a good time to focus on a few forthcoming personal accomplishments.
