Columnists perform playoff post-mortem on Leafs
Production from Leafs’ top player didn’t match lofty expectations in playoff series
Failure isn’t something Auston Matthews is used to.
It’s for other people, other players. It isn’t part of his hockey vocabulary, how he speaks, how he thinks, how he approaches the game.
He knows who he is: that he is great and special and expects to be great and special and pushes himself hard to be great and special.
Normally, he has been that through two rather remarkable seasons with the Toronto Maple Leafs. Just not now, though. Just not now as the dissection of the Leafs is in full vogue and really, for the first time as a pro, there are questions about Matthews, questions that can’t necessarily be answered at this time, questions of him looking different than we’ve seen him look before. There is nothing ordinary about Matthews, not his story, not his game, not his place of birth and hockey heritage, not his ridiculous hands. It’s all been magic and money for the most part. Until the playoff series with the Boston Bruins began. Then this question and so many others: what’s wrong with him? This is what happens when a star fails to produce at playoff time. The first question is always, was he hurt?
Because if he wasn’t hurt, then what happened?
Some players hide injuries. Some teams hide injuries. Teammates often lie about other teammates’ injuries. But everyone I’ve spoken to here, everyone I’ve asked, has stuck to the party line so far. There doesn’t seem to be an injury to speak of, save for the usual late-season bumps and bruises every player has. That could change with Friday’s locker clean-out, where the guy who had nothing wrong with him tells you he played the last few weeks with a bum knee or a wrecked shoulder or something that requires surgery.
The suspicion is, though, with Matthews losing chunks of regular season time due to injuries, that he was coming into the playoffs healthy and on a roll of sorts. He came back for nine games before the Boston series. He scored seven goals and set up seven more in those nine games: a 127-point pace.
Then the seven games against the Bruins and Matthews had two points, tied with the suspended Nazem Kadri. The two of them tied for 10th in team scoring. So often, the subtext of playoffs can be about centres. Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin won the last two Stanley Cups. Jonathan Toews three times before that. Anze Kopitar twice before that. Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci before that. Against the Leafs, Bergeron and Krejci combined to score three goals, setting up 13 others. Total points: 16. Total points for Matthews and Kadri: four, including just one goal by Matthews. During the regular season, the two combined for 66 goals. The lack of production from Matthews and regular linemate William Nylander led coach Mike Babcock to break them up. Matthews didn’t perform to expectations against Boston, Nylander, frankly, was worse.
When asked about Matthews’ inability in the Boston series, Babcock referenced another player he used to coach: Pavel Datsyuk. He said it took Datsyuk years before becoming productive in the playoffs. In his first 42 Stanley Cup games, he scored just three goals. It was a nice analogy by Babcock. It just wasn’t particularly relevant to Matthews. Datsyuk, who was more setup man than goal-scorer and became a brilliant two-way player, began well down the lineup in Detroit on a team that had Steve Yzerman, Sergei Fedorov and Igor Larionov at centre, all Hockey Hall of Famers, ahead of him in the lineup. Matthews has been the Leafs first-line centre from the day he arrived here. He didn’t get to apprentice on a team with Brendan Shanahan, Nick Lidstrom, Brett Hull, Luc Robitaille, Chris Chelios and Dominik Hasek.
He got the Energizer bunny Zach Hyman on his wing and Nylander to start the playoffs. By the end of the series, Connor Brown was his flank on the right side. And for reasons that have never made sense, he got second-group power-play time, which makes Babcock unique in one way. Rarely has any coach in history taken his best shooter and goalscorer off his No. 1 power play. But that doesn’t account for Matthews not being edgy and not being dangerous or, frankly, himself against Boston.
One day he will captain the Leafs, but that day shouldn’t be too soon. There is still work to be done here. Matthews needs to grow into himself and his game as both person and player. He needs to dominate in the playoffs. That didn’t happen here against an impressive Bruins team.