Teen Titans: Early successes of Marner, Matthews exemplify NHL’s youth movement
TORONTO — Players sometimes joke in the Maple Leafs dressing room that Mitch Marner is young enough to be their kid.
One of two teenagers on the Toronto roster, Marner looks even younger than his 19 years off the ice. On it, he and Auston Matthews, also 19, look every bit like ready-made NHL players.
“They’re top-five picks,” Tyler Bozak, Toronto’s 30-year-old veteran centre, said of the duo. “They’re unbelievable players for a reason.”
Teenagers are no longer all that rare in the NHL today. Twenty-two have already played at least a game (Dylan Strome, 19, will soon join that group in Arizona) and seven have already scored. Almost half the league’s 30 teams (14) have at least one teenager and eight teams, including Toronto, have at least two.