BUFFALO, N.Y. – There has been no official “welcome to the NHL moment” for Mitch Marner.
He was never called in for a meeting with Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Lou Lamoriello or head coach Mike Babcock. No one from the organization has formally told him to secure permanent housing. He’s simply living day by day, and happy to keep finding a No. 16 sweater hanging in the dressing room.
“On the first day (of the regular season), Babs kind of said ‘this is our team, this is who we’re staying with,’ ” Marner said Thursday. “That’s really all I’ve been told since.”
Fortunately, the 19-year-old has removed any doubt that might otherwise surround his status by playing so well.
A two-goal performance here against the Buffalo Sabres was the latest piece of evidence to suggest that Marner may already have played his last game in junior hockey. It helped tilt the scales in the Leafs favour on a night where goalie Frederik Andersen was spectacular with 42 saves.
Marner opened the scoring early by rimming the puck along the boards to linemate Tyler Bozak before driving to the edge of the crease and getting it back. He made it 2-0 in the second period by using a little bit of extra effort to separate Marcus Foligno from the puck before beating Robin Lehner.
“He made the right plays at the right time,” said Andersen. “It’s cool to see him bury a couple there.”
It gave the rookie the first two-goal game of his young NHL career.
To date, Marner has been praised mostly for the incredible touch he’s shown as a playmaker. Eight games had passed since his first NHL goal against Boston’s Anton Khudobin and Babcock felt that he was pressing too much in the interim.
“(He) wanted to score a little bit and focused on scoring and he didn’t score,” said Babcock. “Just focus on doing everything right and everything looks after itself.”
Ideally, the JVR-Bozak-Marner line wants to set up shop in the offensive zone and create a good cycle. They did that prior to both of Marner’s goals against the Sabres.
There was an unusual feeling in the visitor’s dressing room at KeyBank Center as the Leafs packed up for home – satisfaction. This organization has had a lot of quiet bus rides along the QEW while winning just two of its previous 19 visits.
“We haven’t had a lot of success here,” said Bozak. “I don’t know what it is, but a lot of things are different now. We’ve got a lot of different guys.”
The Sabres had designed a gameplan geared towards stopping the newest Leafs.
On Thursday morning, coach Dan Bylsma showed his team a pre-scout video that focused heavily on Auston Matthews, William Nylander and Marner. Buffalo wound up doing a good job of limiting the opportunities against, but Marner proved that he doesn’t need much daylight to strike.
“You see the hockey sense,” said Sabres centre Ryan O’Reilly. “When they get the puck, it’s just those really intelligent plays where they suck a guy in and make a little play or they put their stick on the wrong side and they’re moving it around you and cutting to the middle.
“It’s just those little details that a lot of elite players can make. At their age, it’s definitely … dangerous.”
The biggest concern about Marner entering this season was that his size would be an impediment to success in a man’s league. That talk appears to have been for naught.
He’s so skilled and deceptive that it hardly seems to matter that he weighs just 170 pounds.
The first year of Marner’s entry-level contract kicked in when he appeared in a 10th NHL game earlier this week and the thinking in the front office is that there’s no trial at play here. He’s a member of the team – even if that hasn’t been communicated directly to the teenager.
The definitive answer about where he’ll finish this season won’t come until Jan. 13. That’s when the Leafs play their 40th game of the season – a significant milestone since it would give Marner a year of service towards unrestricted free agency should he remain on the roster until then.
While he would still be eligible to be returned to the Ontario Hockey League’s London Knights after that point, the organization would have much less incentive to do so.
Not that any of this is on Marner’s mind now.
The fourth overall pick from 2015 has shown that he belongs in the NHL, but he doesn’t want to take anything for granted.
“They can obviously still send me back (to London) or send me to world juniors or something like that,” said Marner. “Now I’ve just got to make it hard for them do anything like that.”
Nights like this one should help build his case.
