When John Tavares collected his 1,000th career NHL point with an assist on Long Island last month, the Maple Leafs were ecstatic, both on and off the ice.
Tavares also scored that night, diverting Conor Timmins’ shot past Islanders goaltender Ilya Sorokin.
Tavares hasn’t scored a five-on-five goal since December 11. He has gone 17 games without a goal since and has only one five-on-five goal in the last 26 games, the same number as Ryan Reaves and Noah Gregor.
Tavares has only scored five goals in that span, putting him on track for his poorest season with the Leafs.
Is it just bad luck?
That certainly accounts for part of it.
Tavares has been, if not the best net-front operator of his generation, certainly among the best. And since he does a lot of his business in and around the blue paint, and he has tremendous hands, Tavares has been able to shoot the puck at a high rate. He entered this season with a career shooting percentage of 13.1%. His lowest score in any season is 10.8%.
This season, after 42 games, it’s 7.9%.
All the more surprising when you realize that Tavares has never shot the puck as much as he is this season, with 11.8 shots and 20.5 attempts per 60 minutes, both career highs (the former by a hair).
Tavares is still getting the same amount of attention from those high-danger zones. He’s simply not converting these days. Five-on-five. Power play. It didn’t matter. This likely explains, in part, his extremely emphatic celebration after scoring the first Leafs goal in Anaheim earlier this month:
Tavares scored a rare power-play goal this season. He dominated in such situations last season, leading the Leafs with 18 power-play goals (tied for sixth in the NHL) and 39 power-play points. Monster figures that accounted for roughly half of his overall productivity (36 and 80).
Tavares has four power-play goals and ten power-play points with more than half of the season completed, putting him on track to produce fewer than half of last season’s total.
When asked in late November about his performance last year, Tavares attributed it to his spacing and ability to locate open spots, even in tight coverage, and rebounds. or simply predicting how the plays will unfold and being in the proper places and available to the men I’m playing with.”
Tavares felt like he was at the heart of what the Leafs were doing on PP1.
There were several looks like this, which were worked on regularly in practice sessions with then-assistant coach and power-play ringleader Spencer Carbery.
