Over/under projection for John Tavares in his 33-year-old season
The Toronto Maple Leafs are coming into the 2023-24 season having gotten the round 1 monkey off their backs, thanks to a 6-game series win over Tampa in the 2023 Stanley Cup Playoffs. However, that doesn't mean all of the pressure is off. New season, new expectations and there are plenty of reasons to be excited from a fan perspective.
The Leafs have several new faces in Max Domi, Ryan Reaves, John Klingberg, Tyler Bertuzzi and Martin Jones coming in this season. It will also be the first full NHL season for rookies Matthew Knies and Joseph Woll. In addition, Nick Robertson is hoping for a big season to prove his doubters wrong, Auston Matthews will be looking to get back in the Rocket Richard Trophy race and Mitch Marner will look to record the first 100-point season of his NHL career.
Another interesting storyline to consider will be whether or not John Tavares will begin to decline in his 33-year-old season. Last year, we saw the 32-year-old defy age limitations, posting 80 points in 80 games. Since the personnel around him is largely the same, with William Nylander as his likely running mate again on the 2nd line this season, so I can't imagine that he'll slip too much, even if he has lost a step with his foot speed.
I visited a handful of online sportsbooks this morning in hopes of finding the over/under betting lines for John Tavares this season. To my surprise, there were none on Draft Kings, FanDuel, BetMGM and a handful of other sportsbooks. With that in mind, if we were to set the bar for Tavares at 75.5 points this season, I'd probably still hammer the over and here's why.
Nylander managed to rack up 87 points last year with Kerfoot, Jarnkrok and Bunting all seeing some time on their left wing last season. This season, the 3 names who are most likely to see time there are Max Domi, Tyler Bertuzzi and Matthew Knies. Domi is a solid playmaker and could really change the dynamic of that line, Bertuzzi is a recent 30-goal scorer and Knies is a candidate to break out in his rookie season. The talent that Tavares and Nylander will play with is simply better - and even on the off-chance that Jarnkrok sees time on that 2nd line again, he recorded the first 20-goal season of his career last year with the Leafs. There's no reason to believe that he can't do it again.
Tavares will very likely remain a fixture on the Leafs' top PP unit - which is top 2 in the league since Sheldon Keefe took over for Mike Babcock in 2019. With the personnel the Leafs brought in this summer, even if they do make some tweaks to the power play, Tavares will still get plenty of touches as the primary faceoff man on the PP and as the Leafs' net front guy on that top unit.
If Tavares can remain right around that point per game mark this season, the Leafs will only have to survive one more season with their captain eating up $11M against the cap. If they opt to re-up him for his 35+ years, his cap hit will drop substantially, which could open the door for the Leafs to enter the buyer's market and bring in another significant piece. The team appears to be in very good shape, and if Tavares can continue to contribute the way that he has throughout his entire tenure in Toronto, he'll be putting the team in an excellent position to win.
| POLL | ||
SEPTEMBRE 1 | 117 ANSWERS Over/under projection for John Tavares in his 33-year-old season Will John Tavares post over or under 75.5 points this season? | ||
| Over | 83 | 70.9 % |
| Under | 34 | 29.1 % |
| List of polls | ||
