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 and seven have already scored. Almost half the league’s 30 teams (14) have at least one teenager and eight teams, including Toronto, have two.

Only a decade ago there were almost none. In fact, only one teenager played a full season in the 2005-06 campaign: Sidney Crosby. A handful of others saw sparse NHL duty.

Toronto’s two teenagers have both looked more than ready to contribute. Matthews, of course, became the first player ever in the modern NHL era to score four goals in his debut. Marner chipped in with his first NHL goal three nights later. He’s fired 10 shots in two games and has been, according to Bozak, arguably Toronto’s best player.