National Post (National Edition)
Matthews' season one for the ages
LEAFS SNIPER SHOWING HE BELONGS WITH LEAGUE'S ALL-TIME BEST SCORERS
Mike Bossy, probably the greatest natural goal scorer in hockey history, give or take a Wayne Gretzky or a Mario Lemieux, picked Auston Matthews to win the Rocket Richard Trophy this season.
He did that before Matthews scored 14 goals in the first 16 games of this shrunken National Hockey League season.
He made that prediction before being able to calculate that Matthews has scored 56 goals in his last 82 regular season games. That's eight more goals than the perennial Rocket Richard winner Alexander Ovechkin.
This season, heading into Thursday night, the scorecard read: Matthews 14, Ovechkin five in just 10 games. This may be the season in which to pass the baton.
“I hesitate to call it a changing of the guard, because Ovie has been such a great goal scorer, but I would say that Auston is taking a step on that ladder,” Bossy said on the phone Thursday afternoon. “But I do like what I'm seeing from him. Watch him, he loves to score goals, he has that natural goal scorer's instinct; he has the shot, or shall I say shots. You can't always explain scoring. It just happens.
“When you watch Ovie, after so many years, he's still celebrating all the goals. He still loves scoring, I mean he really loves it. What I like about Matthews now is he's celebrating his goals more, he seems to be more emotionally involved than in the past. The other night, he stole a puck behind the net and fed Mitch Marner. You should have seen his face when Marner scored, it just lit up. You can tell they have this special chemistry and I believe success comes from chemistry.
“I lived through it for 10 years with Bryan (Trottier). There's nothing like it. We wouldn't speak, we didn't have to, we had eye movement between each other. We knew how to find each other. It was an incredible time.”
Bossy played 10 years for the New York Islanders, won four Stanley Cups, lost once in the Final, won an incredible 19 straight playoff series before a bad back ended his career prematurely. He scored at 60-goal pace for an entire career. He scored 85 playoff goals in 129 games. His quick release has rarely been matched.
Matthews has some Bossy in him, in that quick release. But he has different qualities as well. “He has a snap shot, a slap shot, a wrist shot, a shot off both feet so you don't know where it's coming from and quick release,” said New York Rangers president John Davidson, who lists Bossy, Gretzky, Lemieux, Guy Lafleur and Phil Esposito as the greatest goal scorers he played against in his 10 NHL seasons.
“All of them were different,” said Davidson. “And then you look at Matthews and he's accurate and he's got velocity and quickness in his delivery. A lot of times with him, you notice a goalie get a bit of the puck and it goes through him. That's how hard he shoots it. The biggest secret for him is the velocity he gets on it. There's almost anger in his shot. It's a rocket. And he's not a oneshot guy, he's an every-shot guy. You're talking about a player in his fifth year taking it to another level.”
Matthews scored a goal against Ottawa on Wednesday night that you had to stop, look at, stop it again on your television to see what really happened. It went that fast. Now you see it, now you don't. Bossy watched the goal Thursday morning and realized he was seeing something few could ever accomplish. In a way, it looked like him.
“It's hard to put into context what he is doing,” said Bossy. “But he's doing it. And it's great for the game, great to see.”
The shortened season robs both Matthews and hockey fans of what could be some kind of record breaking season, either in Toronto or around the league. He won't play 82 games. The equivalent of a 50-goal season is scoring 34 in 56
games. The equivalent of a 60-goal season is 41 goals in 56 games. Bossy once scored 50 goals in 50 games. Gretzky was so impressed he came back the same year, next season, to score 50 in 39 games.
No one will ever do that again. Gretzky's record came when teams were scoring four goals a game. Today, they're scoring fewer than three. Scoring is down 25 per cent from the early '80s. But as you're watching this season, and you're counting goals, you're seeing something in Toronto you've never seen before.
Leafs president Brendan Shanahan scored 50 goals twice for the St. Louis Blues. The last time he did it, there were 14 different 50-goal scorers in the league. There have been 14 50-goal scorers in total over the last 11 seasons, Ovechkin producing five of them.
“I hate comparing eras because every era is great in its own way,” said Bossy. But the way Bossy scored, so quick and with such ease, may never be matched.
“He had this shot, 18 inches off the ice, that you couldn't stop,” said Davidson. “You just couldn't.”
The same now, without the 18 inches, is being said about Matthews.
“It's his hands,” said Bossy, now 64 years old. “It's his feet. It's his quickness. It's his size. It's his angles. A lot of it has to do with hand-eye coordination. He has that at the highest level.
“I like watching him. He finds his place. He has that quick release. And just like that, it's in the net.”
Just like that.