Matthews authors his own greatness

Iin Toronto n the season before Auston Matthews was drafted, I would regularly ask scouts the same question: Name the NHL player his game most resembles?

Many said Anze Kopitar, the Los Angeles centre. Some said Peter Forsberg, the Hall of Famer. The odd scout compared his tenacity to the former Islanders star, Bryan Trottier.

It is becoming clear just days into his second season of whom Auston Matthews most resembles: Matthews himself.

He is an original. Greatness has a way of distinguishing that in hockey.

One special player rarely looks or plays like another special one. They paint their own pictures, develop their own styles and colours and angles.

Jean Béliveau wasn’t much like Wayne Gretzky, who wasn’t much like Guy Lafleur, who wasn’t much like Mario Lemieux. Bobby Orr played the game at a speed we’ve never witnessed before and now his client Connor McDavid has taken hockey to yet another speed. Bobby Hull and Gordie Howe were not at all alike — one electric, one physically dominant — each of them brilliant in contrasting ways.

And as we watch now, still so close to the beginning, really, we see the unique Matthews — his game growing, his skills broadening, wanting the puck more, wanting to skate through the neutral zone with a kind of speed and confidence he didn’t necessarily have as a rookie, his vision becoming more apparent and adroit. He is defining who Auston Matthews is and who he will become.

You couldn’t take your eyes off Orr. He was everywhere. He would take the puck from behind his net, look one way, look the other way, and then he would begin. His journey, skating up ice, head up, almost unstoppable.

Gretzky was subtle, nothing like Orr, using time and space and geometry and his eyes to do what will never be done again. You had to watch him more than once to Auston Matthews of the Leafs is proving to be a generational unique talent in just his second season. really understand. He saw what no one else saw. He put the puck in places no one thought possible.

Everything about Lemieux was almost the opposite of Gretzky. Both main parts of the orchestra, playing different kinds of music.

Lemieux was a giant, Gretzky was a man almost without muscle. Lemieux scored the kind of highlight-film goals you could watch over and over again. Gretzky scored or set up the how-did-hedo-that goals. Lemieux was a huge presence, bigger, faster, stronger — like Jim Brown was on a football field — than almost anyone he played against. The contrast made the game better, even if there is lingering sadness that the two never played against each other in a playoff series of any kind.

Gretzky’s Edmonton Oilers won their final Stanley Cup in 1990, after Gretzky had gone to Los Angeles. Lemieux’s Penguins won their first of two Cups in 1991. The timing was never right for the two to meet.

Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin used to be the modern comparison point of Gretzky and Lemieux, in a different way and a different time.

But that narrative is basically over. Crosby’s Penguins have won three Stanley Cups and he has been the Conn Smythe Trophy winner the past two years. Ovechkin’s brilliance seems to have diminished over time and the lack of playoff success for the Washington Capitals has weighed on his legacy.

It is now Crosby by himself, the veteran leader in the clubhouse. McDavid has become the best player to watch in the game — if not THE best player — and certainly he is inventing a new speed at which to play the game.

Matthews had a unique first season with the Leafs. He scored more goals than he had assists. Most great centremen never do that in their careers.

Who does he play like? He plays like Auston Matthews.

He doesn’t play like McDavid or Crosby. Like almost all special players, he has invented his own game, his ways, with a style all his own. And it’s growing and moving.

This is just beginning. The portrait is not complete. record by scoring 57 points in a trouncing of the Titans on Sunday to become the first rookie since Tarkenton in 1961 to have at least four TD passes with a running score in a game.

He’s the only rookie in NFL history with seven TD passes and two rushing touchdowns in his team’s first four games, and his five TDs on Sunday were the second most by a rookie in league history behind the six Gale Sayers scored in 1965. nationalpost.com