MATTHEWS CARVING OUT HIS NICHE
Maple Leafs centre scoring at a torrid pace and doing so with a unique style of play
Wayne Gretzky scored more goals than anyone in hockey history and yet by sight alone, he would never be considered just a pure and natural goal scorer. He was so much more than that.
He invented new ways to play. He made his office behind the opposing net a part of modern hockey. He saw things no one else saw, slowed the game down the way no one has ever slowed it down.
The greatest in all of sports do that, become special by doing what no one has done before, leaving their mark and their signature on the sport they play. Gretzky did that and so did Mario Lemieux.
Sidney Crosby invented a different way to play, with more bursts and stops with his nonstop competitive spirit.
Auston Matthews isn’t easily defined in his third NHL season, but he’s reaching that place that makes the great ones different. He does so many things well. There is a little bit of Lemieux in him, the way he likes to burst through the neutral zone and use his size and reach and strength. There is a little bit of Brett Hull in him and maybe a touch of Mike Bossy, how he shoots the puck, quickly and from places other players can’t find. The angles. The lining up of the defending players. The quickness of delivery.
With opportunities come goals: seven in four games this season for young Matthews after a disappointing seven-game series against Boston last May and a summer of monster work on his game. Matthews is bigger, stronger, faster, more determined, more confident, and more understanding of what he can and can’t do than he was in his first two seasons. We haven’t seen the best of him yet. That happens over time.
Yet he leads the NHL with seven goals and is the most difficult player in the NHL to control until Connor McDavid, who plays a completely different style in Edmonton, kicks into gear.
Gretzky was so different from Lemieux in size and shape and style of play. Bobby Hull was so different from Gordie Howe, who was different from Rocket Richard. Then came Brett Hull and Alexander Ovechkin. And Matthews is still so young. The best of Gretzky came when he was 24 and older. The best of Lemieux and Ovechkin came after the ages of 23 and 24. Matthews just turned 21 last month.
Whatever it was we thought he could become when the Maple Leafs drafted him in 2016, he is growing into more than that. Leaving his mark already. Scoring goals the way few centres have scored goals over the past several decades.
The winners of the goalscoring title — and for the past 19 years the Rocket Richard Trophy has been presented for that — over the last two decades have mostly been wingers. In 16 of the last 20 years, wingers have led the NHL in scoring. Steven Stamkos (twice), Crosby, and in an outlier year of sorts, Vinny Lecavalier in 2006-07, bucked the trend. But over that time, Ovechkin has led the league in scoring a record seven times, the same number of years Bobby Hull led the league. Howe led the league in scoring five times, as did Gretzky. Lemieux won the goal-scoring title just three times.
Most centres set up goals. This season in Toronto, Matthews and John Tavares are scoring them at a crazy pace. This is relatively new for Tavares, working in this magnificent Maple Leafs power play, working with the gifted playmaker Mitch Marner. In nine previous seasons, he’s scored more goals than assists only once, and that came in a 48-game season. Tavares is normally assist first, score second, the way the position is usually meant to be played.
Matthews’ developing game doesn’t work that way. He has scored 81 goals in 148 NHL games. That’s a 45-goal pace on an entry-level contract. That’s a 45-goal pace without a good deal of power-play time before this season in an NHL without a single 50-goal scorer from the time he has entered the league. He might score 50 this season. He might score 50 next season.
The leap from Year 2 to Year 3 has been easy to surmise and quantify from the moment training camp began. This pace can’t be kept up — no player can score that much — but how much can Matthews score?
How many goals? How many Rocket Richard Trophies will he win? Can he reach the six goal-scoring titles Phil Esposito won, the most from any centre, at a time when the sport was so different than it is today?
Along the way, he is inventing a new style of play that is his and his alone. The way Gretzky once did, the way Lemieux once did, the way McDavid is doing in Edmonton.
The great ones are originals who paint their own canvases, turn artistry into sport. Matthews is just beginning on this trail. The possibilities are endless.