4 Toronto Maple Leafs on Track to Set New Career-Highs This Season – The Hockey Writers –

The end of an NHL season signals dramatic playoff battles, but it also opens the door to the achievement of individual milestones and single-season records. While the hockey world focuses on Alex Ovechkin’s chase of Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goals record, other marks are being hit across the league. Just this past weekend, Kiefer Sherwood of the Vancouver Canucks set a new single-season league record for hits.

In Toronto, league records aren’t necessarily being set, but some noteworthy benchmarks are – or are in the process of – being achieved. John Tavares recently reached the 30-goal plateau for the seventh time in his career, Matthew Knies notched his career-best 25th of the season last week, and Bobby McMann is now an officially certified 20-goal scorer in the NHL. Even Auston Matthews, whose 27 goals represent an underwhelming total for the reigning 69-goal scorer, is three away from a ninth 30-goal campaign (one behind Mats Sundin for the franchise lead).

While round numbers are nice and all, true growth is demonstrated through reaching new personal heights as players, and several Maple Leafs look poised to do just that. Let’s look at four Toronto Maple Leafs who are on the cusp of setting new statistical high-water marks for themselves.

Mitch Marner (Points)

One way or another, Mitch Marner is going to cash in this summer when he becomes an unrestricted free agent – that much is guaranteed. Still, it sure would be nice for his camp to hit the open market coming off the best statistical season of his NHL career, no? Marner remains on track to do just that, although it could come right down to the wire.

With 64 assists (which ties him for third in the league) to go along with 22 goals, the 27-year-old now has 86 points, 13 shy of his career-best 99 that he set in 2022-23. That means he’ll need 14 points across the team’s final 11 games to hit the century mark in points and reach a new career milestone. Appropriately enough, Marner’s current pace of 1.23 points per game projects 13.5 the rest of the way, putting him right between matching his own personal points record and surpassing it.

William Nylander (Goals)

You can’t say that William Nylander isn’t consistent, at least in terms of scoring goals, anyway. For two straight seasons, he has scored exactly 40 goals while playing in exactly 82 games. Doing so for a third straight season, however, would amount to something of a disappointment,…