Revisiting the Maple Leafs’ Point Projections for the 2024-25 NHL Season

by

For the Toronto Maple Leafs, a ninth straight playoff appearance has been officially locked in, but they still have six meaningful contests ahead to determine their first-round opponent and whether they can hold onto the top spot in the Atlantic Division.

Playoffs aside, William Nylander, Matthew Knies and Bobby McMann are among the Maple Leafs to have already set new career goal-scoring benchmarks, while Auston Matthews will finish well short of his career-best 69 goals and 107 points set last season. With the 2024-25 regular season coming to a close, now is a good time to revisit some preseason point projections. Rather than taking a stab at my own, I evaluated the projections presented by NHL.com. Here’s a look at where I (and they) got it right and wrong.

Auston Matthews: 110 Points

With a goal and an assist in Saturday’s 5-0 win over the Columbus Blue Jackets, Matthews reached the 30-goal plateau for the ninth straight season and hit 71 points. Solid? Yes. Was more expected from a player projected to record 110 points? Yes. Injuries have clearly played a role in the 27-year-old’s season, who missed 15 games, but it also hasn’t been as productive a campaign in his first year as team captain.

Auston Matthews Toronto Maple Leafs
Has the ‘C’ weighed heavily on Auston Matthews this season? (Jess Starr/The Hockey Writers)

In other words, I was far off in suggesting that the NHL’s projection of 110 points was on the low end. In hindsight, it’s a credit to the rest of the team that the Maple Leafs could withstand a major regression from their top star and still stay atop the Atlantic. Scoring 30 goals and over 70 points is nothing to scoff at, but it’s well below what we’ve come to expect from Matthews. Hopefully, this dip in production will lead to a turnaround in the postseason and perhaps a renaissance in 2025-26.

Verdict: Neither NHL.com nor I saw Matthews’ down season coming.

William Nylander: 100 Points

In response to NHL.com’s 100-point projection for Nylander, I agreed he would be in the ballpark of the century mark but ultimately fall just short (I projected a point total between 87 and 98 points). With six games remaining, that appears to be exactly where the 28-year-old Swede is headed.

Although Nylander has officially set a new career-high in goals with 44, his assists stand well behind his stats from the past three seasons, with 82 points through 76 games. Should he maintain his 1.08 point-per-game average through the rest of the season, he will end up with between 88 and 89 points, as I predicted.

The fact that NHL.com’s point projections far exceeded Matthews and Nylander’s output this season is an indication that the league anticipated the return of Toronto’s dominant offensive attack of previous seasons and not the defensive-minded game they’ve transitioned to under new head coach Craig Berube.

Verdict: Take that, NHL.com!

Mitch Marner: 95 Points

In 2023-24, a high-ankle sprain held Mitch Marner to just 69 games, hindering his ability to build on a career-best campaign from the season before. The prospect of another injury was the main factor that kept projections for the 2024-25 season in check. That concern has since been proven wrong, as he has missed just one game – a 6-3 win against the Calgary Flames – due to a mild lower-body injury, and he’s remained a top-line presence.

As a result, Marner is just a point shy of NHL.com’s projection of 95 points and will make a push to reach the 100 mark for the first time in his career. He has been playing with that milestone in his sights, collecting three goals and eight assists over his last seven games.

Verdict: I won’t celebrate Marner avoiding injury since there are still six games left.

John Tavares: 71 Points

As I mentioned in my preseason projections, a disappointing 2023-24 from John Tavares raised questions about whether the 34-year-old was declining. In the final season of his seven-year contract with the Maple Leafs, he has answered those questions with a resounding ‘no’. His bounce-back season (which I did predict) has been a boon to an organization looking for scoring help, even if it might cost them more money this summer.

Tavares missed six games in January due to a lower-body injury suffered in practice. Even still, the 16-year veteran has managed 70 points this season, including 36 goals to tie his second-highest total in seven years with the club. With his next point, he will match his NHL.com projections, although his point-per-game production to date would suggest that he’s primed to blow right past it before the season’s over.

I theorized that Tavares’ bounce-back season would be his attempt to offset the reduced firepower up front with Tyler Bertuzzi gone and no viable option slotted to replace him. That could help explain his increased average ice time this season (18:20 per game, 28 seconds higher than last season), but it doesn’t fully offset his seven games missed, nor does it account for the offensive support provided by Knies and McMann. This might be a case of the hometown boy turning back the clock.

Verdict: Bounce-back season achieved!

Max Domi: 50 Points

This has not been the season Max Domi was hoping for, certainly not after he re-signed with the Maple Leafs last summer on a four-year, $15 million contract. Expected to provide secondary offence beyond the top two lines, the well-traveled 10-year veteran has produced just eight goals and 31 points in 68 games. He kicked off the season with a 22-game goalless drought and then went another 26 games without finding the back of the net to begin 2025.

Berube and the coaching staff have experimented with moving Domi to the middle and on the wing in the top-six, looking to find some way to get the 30-year-old going. Ahead of the trade deadline, his name even came up as a potential change-of-scenery candidate.

This wasn’t what Domi had in mind, nor what NHL.com anticipated with their 50-point projection. It’s a head-scratching step back for a player who ostensibly finally had some stability thanks to his four-year contract and, at least early on, more consistent opportunities.

Verdict: The 50-point season isn’t coming, nor is the double-digit goal total.

Matthew Knies: 43 Points

Considering NHL.com’s forecast that Knies would more than double his career point mark, they had a bullish take on the development and breakout potential of the 22-year-old. In retrospect, their projection of 43 points seems too conservative.

Knies has transformed himself into an indispensable part of the core this season (and probably earned himself a nice pay bump this summer), recording 26 goals and 52 points. He ranks fourth on the team in goals and fifth in points, providing a much-needed boost in secondary scoring outside of the ‘Core Four’. As a blossoming power forward with a physical game, speed and goal-scoring abilities, he will be an important part of the franchise for years to come.

Verdict: I said that Knies “has the chance to cruise past his 43-point projection”. He’s taken that chance.

You Might Also Like

Morgan Rielly: 67 Points

Matthews and Domi both merit consideration among the most disappointing Maple Leafs this season, but top “honours” go to Morgan Rielly. Toronto’s longest-tenured player is stuck at seven goals and 30 assists, well shy of his 67-point projection and the 58 points he recorded in fewer games last season. He also carries a team-worst minus-13 rating.

From the start of the season, things haven’t gone right for Rielly. The 31-year-old was expected to form one-half of the Maple Leafs’ top defensive pair with new addition Chris Tanev, but the duo never clicked, and after struggling to find chemistry with Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Rielly was paired with trade deadline acquisition Brandon Carlo. Tanev has since thrived alongside Jake McCabe, while Rielly finds himself playing sheltered minutes, averaging his lowest ice time since 2014-15.

Morgan Rielly Toronto Maple Leafs
Morgan Rielly, Toronto Maple Leafs (Amy Irvin / The Hockey Writers)

Given the organization’s challenges this offseason and newfound defensive depth, Rielly’s struggles could impact his future with the club. The Maple Leafs will want to find room to re-sign Marner, Tavares and Knies, which could prove challenging even with a rising cap. Conversely, the backend already has Tanev, McCabe, Carlo and Ekman-Larsson under contract for next season, so paying Rielly the $7.5 million per season he’s owed through 2030 to essentially be a depth defenceman may not be the best use of cap space.

Verdict: Sadly, Rielly isn’t even close.

Oliver Ekman-Larsson: 38 Points

Oliver Ekman-Larsson has been a solid, stabilizing presence on Toronto’s blue line this season but still remains unlikely to reach his projected 38 points (he has 29 in 75 games). This wasn’t, after all, the season to be bullish on the offensive production of the Maple Leafs’ backend, given Berube’s penchant for conservative, low-event hockey.

The club ranks 19th in points and 25th in goals by defencemen this season. Ekman-Larsson has seen significantly more ice time this season than he did with the Stanley Cup-winning Florida Panthers in 2023-24 (21:00 per game this year, compared to 18:24 in Florida), but he is three points and five goals behind last season’s production. Suffice it to say, the 33-year-old popularly known as OEL is a distance away from notching back-to-back 20-goal seasons with the Arizona Coyotes in the mid-2010s.

Verdict: The NHL.com projection (and my agreement) didn’t account for the player that Ekman-Larsson has become at this stage of his career.

Joseph Woll: 33 Wins

As time passes, predicting that Joseph Woll would win 33 games becomes more bewildering. It’s not that Woll has had a bad season – he hasn’t. Winning 25 games while serving as one-half of a highly successful goaltending tandem alongside Anthony Stolarz represents a triumphant campaign for the 26-year-old.

But that’s the problem. Woll has already more than doubled his career-high win total while maintaining a near-identical save percentage to last season (.906%, compared to .907) and improving on his goals-against average (2.78, compared to 2.94). The fact that it still hasn’t been enough to sniff the 33 wins that NHL.com predicted shows how off-base their win total was.

Thanks to Stolarz’s mid-season injury, Woll has earned the lion’s share of the netminding opportunities (39 games to 31). However, he was never going to take the reins as the starter within a skilled-but-inexperienced tandem. Asking him to exceed his career win total to date when there was no indication that he’d be the man in net (Stolarz is widely expected to get first crack at the crease come playoff time) was probably unfair from the get-go.

Verdict: Considering only three NHL goalies have crossed the 33-win threshold this season, it was not a realistic total for Woll.

Amidst the stylistic change that the Maple Leafs have undergone under Berube, it’s no wonder that some projections failed to hit the mark. Ultimately, though, it’s the team performance that matters. As it stands, they are leading the Atlantic, on track to achieve their fourth straight 100-point season and enjoying some cautious optimism heading into the postseason. I’m not sure that would have been projected, either.

SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE TO OUR TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS SUBSTACK NEWSLETTER