The company he keeps, statistically, is elite.
The salary he is paid by the Maple Leafs is Toronto-overpay-elite.
The consistency he has played with after establishing himself at age 21 — season to season, year to year — has been unlike any Maple Leafs winger in history. Three times he has scored at more than a 100-point pace per an 82-game schedule. Three times he has scored between 93 and 99 points. Twice he has been a first-team NHL all-star, which no Leafs forward has been since Frank Mahovlich.
Marner’s past four seasons, on a points-per-game basis, have been almost a straight line — 1.23, 1.23, 1.34 and 1.21.
All of which makes his ordinary playoffs, again this year, more than disquieting.
He yearns to be a superstar in more than paycheque. He yearns to be a difference-maker and a hockey celebrity. He yearns to be great when it’s time to be great — and that’s all inside of him.
He doesn’t yearn to disappear the way in which he has disappeared in the first two games of this playoff series against Boston. He doesn’t want to be The Invisible Man. Nobody does.
This is the time of season to be great, to stand out, to be noticed, to find a way, in Canucks coach Rick Tocchet’s words, to fight your way through the pain.
In fairness, this has been a transitional time for Marner. In the series with Boston, the transition has not gone so well. This season, big picture, was the largest separation he has experienced from longtime linemate Auston Matthews — not necessarily from a linemates perspective, but from a developmental point of view.
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