not a personal affront to Matthews, i have no idea how Matthews feels about being the C. The face of your franchise is in the majority of cases the captain. And as great as marner is he isn't currently nor will he be better than Matthews IMO, People crowing abut marners 69 points this season Matthews had 63 points in 20 less games. Its possible and probably likely that if both play 82 games marner can outscore him in multiple seasons. Im not really all that bothered by scoring. When Matthews plays he draws the other teams best players to shut him down (or beat him) because he is our best player.
As for the first bolded, I don't like the mono excuse when the only person who has ever said is Saskatchewan scientist Mike Babcock saying something off the cuff. A poster I quoted before that post was brushing off Matthews shoulder/Back injuries this year and went on to talk about Marners mono which was never confirmed.
so why is it an excuse? the kid was sick or was still recovering from being sick. he still got his pound of flesh from last year, despite that, because once you put the jersey on, you're healthy. this year. matthews wasn't feeling great because of his back slash shoulder. i think anyone who has actual sense can give matthews his pound of flesh (because of the same above reason) but keep that in mind. Babcock was the one who announced all the injuries so i don't get why it's "Saskatchewan science" for Marner, so on and so forth.
that's fair if you want to believe that (like to me it doesn't matter).
you can argue if matthews played in 20 more games he would have eclipsed that - but then you can argue
if he wouldn't have had a long slump (13 games) like last year. I think also a lot of people forget that Marner had like 2 goals until December.
i feel that all three (Nylander, Marner, and Matthews) have the ability to do what you just said. overall, like i said. it could be how it is in Chicago, and I don't think it matters because of a season or whatever. for the very longest time It was Toews
and then Kane. It was Toews's team, he was the face etc etc. sometimes it was ToewsandKane because you couldn't really differentiate between the two. and now you can very easily argue it's Kane
and then Toews.
what i think a lot of people are ignoring that it doesn't matter because they are last time i checked, both on our team so whomever people wanna see as the franchise face or whatever it's like fighting how you say tomato or potato.