Arizona braces for Papi’s return
DENVER— It was as though the schedule was made with Auston Matthews in mind.
Given the whirlwind life the Maple Leafs star rookie has been leading these past few years, the idea of a Christmas spent at home got to be an unreasonable pipe dream. Last year, when he was granted some time off from his job in the Swiss pro league, Matthews spent the holiday season in Helsinki, where he led the U.S. to a bronze medal at the world junior championship. The year before that, Matthews was introduced to the merits of a Canadian Christmas as a member of a U.S. team that played its world junior games in Montreal.
So let’s just say he was happy to learn that the Maple Leafs play their final pre-Christmas-break game in Glendale, Ariz., home of the Arizona Coyotes. After Friday’s game, in other words, while most of the rest of the team heads back to Toronto or elsewhere, Matthews will have the luxury of spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at his childhood home in Scottsdale, where he grew up occasionally shooting pucks in his desert driveway while dreaming of the NHL life he’s currently leading.
“It’s always a nice treat to come home,” Matthews was saying the other day. “I’ll have pretty much my whole family (at Friday’s game), so it’ll be nice. I know I talked to my coach, who coached me in midget and bantam and stuff, and he said they had to cancel practice. Nobody wanted to go to practice (Friday) because we’re going in there playing.”
Matthews didn’t have that last part quite right. The Arizona Bobcats, one of the organizations for which a young Auston starred, didn’t just cancel one practice in honour of Friday’s LeafsCoyotes game. According to Ron Filion, the coach of whom Matthews spoke, the organization cancelled practice for five different age-group teams on Friday.
“Not enough kids. And the biggest problem: No coaches. Everybody purchased tickets,” Filion said with a chuckle over the phone from Phoenix. “For our program, it’s a big show. Over 160 kids are going to be there, plus families, grandpas, grandmas. All our young kids, they take a lot of pride in going and seeing Papi.”
“Papi,” of course, is the nickname by which most of Matthews’ childhood friends came to know him, a Spanish term of endearment bestowed on him by his Mexican-born mother, Ema, that means, essentially, “Little Daddy.” And if he’s moved past that moniker — around the Leafs dressing room, he goes by “Mats” or “A-Mats” or “Matty”— Filion said his former protege certainly hasn’t allowed his NHL success to change much else.
“He hasn’t changed at all,” Filion said. “Since the beginning of the season we’ve had a text here and there. But I’ve got more texts from him the past week than I got since he left in August. I can feel his excitement to come and play at home.”
It’s been more than two months since Matthews made his explosive entry on the NHL stage by scoring a remarkable four goals in an unforgettable first game. Since then he’s done no less than establish himself as one of the league’s elite generators of offence at a mere 19 years old.
Heading into Thursday’s game in Colorado, Matthews, who had scored in nine of his past 12 games, ranked ninth in the league in goals per game. He ranked fifth in shots on goal per game. He was leading the Maple Leafs in scoring. He was also first among Toronto forwards in key puck-possession metrics and in average ice time.
“He can do it all. He doesn’t have a flaw, which is rare,” said Nathan MacKinnon, 21, the Colorado forward and fellow No. 1 overall pick who played with Matthews on the North American team at the World Cup of Hockey. “He can shoot. He can stickhandle. He’s got great vision …”
And yet when Matthews was asked Thursday about his statistical achievements, and how they might relate to the race for the Calder Trophy for rookie of the year, he spoke less about winning awards than embracing the daily grind.
“I don’t think it’s something you focus on too much, points, numbers, all that stuff,” he said. “I think it’s just something you go at day by day and just treat it like any other day, just an opportunity to get better.” Matthews warmed up when he was asked about his progress as a two-way centreman under the tutelage of head coach Mike Babcock.
“That (defensive) zone play, in my opinion, was my biggest weakness at the start of the season,” he said. “And I think it’s been my biggest growth and development so far.
Filion said the two-way education began years ago in minor hockey. Though Matthews was a gifted scorer — “I always said Papi’s going to score no matter what league he’s playing in. The kid just had it,” Filion said — he, like a lot of kids, didn’t always embrace defensive fundamentals
“He did a lot of cheating out of our zone,” Filion said.
Filion said he benched his star player more than once for such sins, and more remarkably, he said he never once heard a word of protest from Matthews’ father, Brian, in the wake of those benchings. This, he said, was unusual in the entitlement-pocked world of minor hock- ey.
Auston, Filion said, was always a willing learner. And so he continues to be.
“From what he’s telling me he’s learning a ton from Babcock. His description was somewhat like, ‘It’s like university for me,’ ” Filion said. “If there’s ever a kid that wanted to get on the ice, oh my goodness. Whenever there was extra ice, it was, ‘Coach Ron, can I come?’ . . . And it was all coming from him. Brian never pushed him to stop or to play. It was all his desire.”
All these years later, a ticket to see him play is the desire of many aspiring Papis in the Valley of the Sun. While Matthews said he’s looking forward to the holiday with his family, he’s well aware of his stature both in his adopted home and his childhood one. So he’s looking forward to being the centre of his hometown hockey community’s attention.
“You want to be that person that they can look up to. I had those people I looked up to when I was younger,” Matthews said. “So it’s definitely a pretty big honour to kind of be that symbol for them.”