John Tavares is mired in his worst scoring slump in a decade, amid fears that age is catching up to the Maple Leafs captain | The Star
The line had been more or less flying until the team’s COVID break in December. Tavares was scoring, Nylander was being praised for his defensive work, and Kerfoot was everyone’s hero as the Swiss Army knife of the team, thriving as the left-winger on the line. Through the first 32 games, Nylander led the Leafs in scoring (35 points) while Tavares and Auston Matthews each had 34.
But the line had a very bad night in Colorado on Jan. 8, and terrible night the next game in Vegas on Jan. 11, and things haven’t been right since. Tavares’s line — and it hasn’t always been both Nylander and Kerfoot — has been out-possessed, outshot and outscored (20-9) in nine of its last 18 games in five-on-five situations. Tavares is minus-12 since Jan. 8.
That might be OK for a .500 team, or an average player. But not for Tavares, in the midst of a seven-year, $77-million (U.S.) contract that, from a cap-hit perspective, has him tied with Drew Doughty as the fifth-most expensive player in the NHL.
That has caused some worry. The team’s high-priced players over 30 — Tavares and injured defenceman Jake Muzzin — are underperforming.
Those who suggested the Leafs would regret the length of Tavares’s deal are starting to have their voices heard.
Tavares, 31, played a season-low 15 minutes and four seconds against Montreal on Monday, and the fear is he has begun the downward slide that so many athletes experience after 30.
This is Tavares’s longest goalless drought since he went 11 straight games without a goal to finish the 2011-12 season. He went 17 straight games without a goal in his rookie season, and 13 without a goal in the early part of the 2011-12 season.
The line simply seems out of sync. For example, Tavares will often retrieve a puck along the boards and send it a few feet behind him. Matthews will do this too, with Mitch Marner in the vicinity to pick it up.
But when Tavares has done it, neither Nylander nor Kerfoot were anywhere in the vicinity. Tavares’s hard-won puck battle goes for naught, or less than naught, ending up on the opposition stick with the play going the other way. Pittsburgh and St. Louis each got scoring chances from it in recent games.
For now, it is simply a slump. All players go through them. Since Tavares entered the league in 2009, his 381 goals are third only to Alex Ovechkin (542) and Steve Stamkos (439). And his 866 points are sixth in the NHL.
But the Leafs, who have lost five of their last seven games, need Tavares, and for that matter Nylander, to snap out of it.
