After just under half a decade leading the Toronto Maple Leafs, John Tavares has surrendered the “C” on his jersey to make way for superstar Auston Matthews to become the new team captain.
Having left the New York Islanders – who drafted him first overall in 2009 – to become one of the highest-paid players in the NHL with Toronto, Tavares was handed the captaincy, which had been vacant for three and half years.
John Tavares has consistently produced high-level play with the Toronto Maple Leafs, yet despite this, he has received significant criticism from fans over the team’s repeated inability to make a deep run in the playoffs. It’s fair then to ask: now it’s all over, how will John Tavares be remembered as Leafs captain?
Great Expectations
When John Tavares left the New York Islanders in the summer of 2018, it sent shockwaves around the NHL. Coming off the second-highest points-scoring season of his career (37 goals, 47 assists), Tavares was seen as the best player on the market.
His decision to join his boyhood team for less money than he could have received elsewhere instantly made a young Toronto team look like perennial contenders for the Stanley Cup.
Alongside future MVP Auston Matthew and elite wingers Mitch Marner and William Nylander, Tavares formed the so-called ‘core four’: the group of highly paid but highly skilled forwards who would bring a championship to Toronto.
John Tavares: Declining Performances
Now Tavares is in the final year of his seven-year, 77 million-dollar contract with the Leafs; it is clear that he is no longer the level of player he was when he signed.
Tavares played excellently for his first few seasons in the Scotia Bank Arena and seemed well worth the money the Leafs had invested in him. In 2018-2019, he scored 47 goals and created 41 assists for 88 points – the most of his career.
That season, the Leafs scored an impressive 100 points in the regular season before losing in a close seven-game series against the Stanley Cup finalist Boston Bruins in the first round of the playoffs.
However, after this auspicious start, things gradually began to go downhill for Tavares. By 2023-24, he scored just 65 points in 80 games, marking his worst per-game production since his first season in the NHL.
A Huge Investment
Throughout his time with the Leafs, Tavares has accounted for $11 million on the team’s salary cap every season – a massive number. In 2018-19, he had the second-largest cap hit in the entire league (behind only generational talent Connor McDavid), and by 2023-2024, he still ranked inside the top ten.
While Tavares has undeniably been a key piece of some Maple Leafs squads that have seen sustained regular season success, it is much more debatable whether Tavares has been played at the level of one of the ten best players in the league, especially in recent years.
Moreover, as Matthews, Marner, and Nylander entered their primes, they also received high-paying contracts. In 2023-24, they were the first, twelfth and sixth highest-paid players in the NHL, respectively.
This has meant that for most of this generation of Leafs Hockey, a disproportionate amount of the Leafs’ allowed spending under the salary cap has gone to these four players. Fans have wondered if committing so much money to Tavares, in particular, has hampered Toronto’s ability to sign other players to compliment their stars and hindered their success in the long run.
John Tavares: Major Disappointment
None of this would have mattered for Tavares’ legacy as Maple Leafs Captain if he had been able to lead his team to victory in the Stanley Cup playoffs. However, far from triumphant celebrations, the results in the postseason have been bitterly frustrating.
In all but one season with Tavares as the locker room talisman, the Maple Leafs lost in the first round. The only time they didn’t was in 2022-23 when they were dismantled 4-1 in the second round by the eventual finalist Florida Panthers.
Even worse for Toronto Fans, in every season other than 2022-23, the team rubbed salt in their wounds by falling in a winner-take-all elimination game. Perhaps the worst of these losses came in the pandemic-shortened 2020-21 season when the Maple Leafs blew a 3-1 series lead to lose in Game 7 against their archrivals, the Montreal Canadiens.
Tavares himself has been a focal point of fan anger for the team’s continual failures, as he has, at times, struggled severely. His point production has been just 0.63 points per game in the playoffs, compared to just under a point per game in the regular season. While he is certainly not the only Toronto player to have failed to reach his regular season levels, these drop-offs cast a shadow over his time with the Leafs.
Conclusion
John Tavares has a complex and fascinating legacy as captain of the Maple Leafs. On the one hand, he has played well on some very good teams, but on the other, he has failed to help Toronto get over the hump in the playoffs, and there are valid doubts about whether he truly lived up to the size of his deal.
With only a year left on his contract and without the pressure of being the captain on his shoulders, Tavares has another season to prove how much he has gone to offer and cast his Leafs tenure in a brighter light.
