Why is Marner the only one getting the blame for their playoffs. Matthews is just as bad if not worse but he doesn't seem to get any heat for it, just a lot of excuses. When it comes down to it he's the league's highest paid player shouldn't the expectation be near McDavid level?
Personally, I’ve been criticizing all of them, but to your point it’s probably because of play styles
Matthews “plays the right way” in the playoffs. He engages in scrums, is in the slot and front of the net area and usually has 1 game in the series where he looks like a Mcdavid-esque player. Marner can never put together a game like that, he didn’t have a single multi-point game in this series. Also matthews has “injuries” every year.
Marner’s style has him choosing to stay at the point for 99% of our offensive zone time, he never goes to the front of the net or even the slot tbh, he took 1 shot in the last 3 games. He passed up a slot chance twice to instead give it to Edmundson and jarnkrok. He didn’t take the free goal Swayman gave him. He just plays an insanely passive almost scared style of hockey that almost never works.
It just seems whenever you need Marner, he’s never there.
People are also ok with nylander, because he makes 7. Now that he’s on 11.5 let’s see how that goes. Moreover, he produced in elimination games much more than the other two. If we need a big goal, I’m looking towards nylander to do something, not Marner. Also he plays with JT, so some excuse him a bite because he plays with a 3C in the playoffs every year and the scraps of the 2LW.