Historically, I think people just get tired of the Big 4 and their flaws:
Nylander is high skill who can give you shockingly low floor effort. But he's clearly not paid like the other three so it's a bit unfair that the expectations are the same. He's the 4th highest paid player on the team.
Depends on your expectations:
If you expect him to be the highest point producer, then that's just stupid. He's paid the 4th most, and should not be expected to score at the same level as Matthews or Marner. Tavares is in year, 5 ?? of 7 on his deal and one would be an idiot to expect Tavares to outproduce a player in the prime of his career with the skillset of Nylander.
However, what every player should always, without fail, be expected to do in the playoffs, is to put in the effort in every shift.
That is non-negotiable.
And you can't, and neither can anyone else, even begin to argue that Nylander has committed to every shift every game. It's not the regular season where all teams play 82 games. It's the time of year where you lose, you may go home.
Maybe we can't expect him to turn into Jere Lehtinen out there, but make a little effort on the back check.
On a similar note, he's never going to be Ovechkin with thunderous hits, but he's a big guy and shows us his strength when protecting the puck, so maybe once in a while he could accidentally brush up against someone else.
These last 2 points are not skill based, they have absolutely nothing to do with the pecking order on the team, and are huge markers for the effort level discharged through a game.
There are no free passes in terms of effort.
Period.
Marner suffers from Little Brother syndrome and in the big games when you have a war going on you have a finger painter trying to lead the troops.
Marner, while being the most creative player, has a ton of flaws in his game. Most noticeably, is his penchant for trying to do too much when things aren't going well.
The 99 point season must have gnawed at him after 2 others in the mid to high 90's as well.
Matthews is always going to be the big brother, and he always wants to show that he's just as worthy of praise.
Defensively, he's really good when he focuses on the defensive game (like while on the penalty kill), but isn't quite as focused on being smart defensively at even strength.
While his shot is not as dreadful as it was, it's still not his forte. He needs to show the shot in order to keep the opponents from cheating off him, but he goes through periods of shaking off good passing opportunities and forcing bad shots.
One thing I noticed last game was that when it wasn't working, Mitch started throwing his body around.
The guy is the size of a hamster, but he's not afraid to throw it out there.
Tavares is turning into a fossil before our eyes and I think a casual would be surprised he's 7 years younger than Giordano.
Tavares is what he always projected to be.
How anyone can be surprised is just baffling to me.
He's a fantastic face-off taker, high skill on the puck, great shooter in tight kind of player.
Tavares was never looked at as a great defender and he's never been a good skater.
Matthews the Mr Everything 2022 who took a big step back at every aspect while getting lapped by most of the upper echelon superstars in the regular season and has been inconsistently effective on this "run."
Matthews didn't score as much this year as he has in the past 2 seasons, but his overall game is by far, the best in the league.
Of all the talk of Barkov, etc, they don't hold a candle to Matthews in terms of what he can do offensively and defensively.
I posted a heat map of all the shots, hits, hits taken, shots blocked, etc of Matthews.
His positioning in the defensive zone is just about perfect, and his chances on offense are also concentrated in the slot.
He has been beyond snakebitten these 2 games with saves off the top of the blocker, off the shaft of the stick, and even a shot along the ice that Bob awkwardly fell onto.
Despite this, 12 playoff game point streak,
He's been physical, blocked a ton of shots, good at the backchecking to break up rushes, and about average at the dot (something he really needs to get better at cheating on).
Of the big guys, Matthews has played closest to his best.
The shots sometimes don't go in, and sometimes they do. That's down to a million factors.
The things outside of the goal scoring are all determined by the player, and he's been top notch on those individual parts of the game.