The trouble with Matthews
Month-long injury hurts on many levels, and puts an even bigger target on his back
On the surface, Auston Matthews looks like the laboratory-built vision of the ideal hockey player. A strapping sixfoot-three and 220-some pounds, he skates like a dream, shoots like a laser, plays keepaway like it’s glued to his stick.
Certainly he’s put up the numbers to justify the fawning. With 84 goals in 155 games as a Maple Leaf, nobody’s scored at a higher rate since he arrived in the league.
On Monday, sadly, anyone who pays attention in Leafland was rhyming off a less glowing collection of figures. Matthews, the club announced, is expected to miss a minimum of a month with the left shoulder injury he suffered on a crushing net-front hit from Jacob Trouba in Saturday’s win over the Winnipeg Jets. Add that to the right shoulder injury that kept Matthews out of 10 games late last season — and which appeared to limit his effectiveness in the playoffs — and that’s two shoulder injuries suffered in the past eight months. Tack on the shoulder injury Matthews has acknowledged suffering as a teenager and you’ve got a history that’s concerning, especially given Leafs coach Mike Babcock’s insistence that Matthews “did work this summer” to build muscle around his shoulder joints. Such is the nature of shoulder hurt, experts will tell you, that suffering once increases your chances of suffering again.
With 10 goals in his first 11 games — a 74-goal pace — this looked to be the season Matthews would take another giant leap toward greatness. Barely a month into it, he’s taken a sad step backward.
And shoulders haven’t been the sole focus of Matthews’ growing resume of hurt. There’s also the concussion that kept him out of six games last season, and the back injury that removed him from the lineup for another four games last season, which echoed the back injury he suffered while playing in the Swiss league during his NHL draft year, and brought back memories of the broken femur he endured a couple of years before that.
Now, bad luck is bad luck. As Babcock said the other night: “Sometimes things happen.” And considering Matthews is still just 21 and played all 82 games as a rookie, it’d be harsh to label him injury prone. It’s fair to say, though, that he’s becoming alarmingly familiar with the ins and outs of injury rehab.
The player some would call The Franchise is learning far too quickly that, in the NHL, health is ever fragile.
“It sucks, but it’s just part of the game,” Matthews said Monday. “I’m going to work as hard as I can to get back as soon as possible and get back to myself. We’ve got a lot of depth on this team, and no doubt we’ll be fine.”
That the Leafs figure to be fine, notwithstanding Monday’s mostly listless 3-1 loss to the Calgary Flames, makes sense. There’s no judging such things based on one game. Last year, when Matthews missed a combined 20 games with those three separate ailments, his teammates played at 98-point pace. They did it thanks to big performances by the likes of Mitch Marner, who racked up seven goals and 24 points with Matthews out, and Nazem Kadri, who had seven goals during the 10-game stretch Matthews missed for his previous shoulder recovery. They did it, too, by committee.
And so it’ll have to go this time around. For Kadri, his seasonopening stint as a third-line afterthought is over, at least for a while. Kadri was on a line with Marner and Patrick Marleau Monday; no excuse not to produce there, and he scored the lone home goal, albeit late in the third period with his only shot on goal.
Elsewhere, Matthews’ absence will be a test of depth. Now it’s Par Lindholm and Frederik Gauthier occupying the third- and fourth-line centre spots, their combined eight career NHL points suddenly responsible for driving the bottom-six offence.
“Hopefully it’s something that’s going to bring out the best in us,” said Frederik Andersen, the No. 1 goaltender.
In the category of optimistic spins on otherwise bad news, William Nylander couldn’t have been gutted by Monday’s development. Not that anyone roots for anyone else to get hurt. But as Curtis Joseph, the former Leafs goaltender, was saying in an interview the other day, thinking back to his own experiences missing part of an NHL season in a contract dispute, it’s only human nature for a player in Nylander’s position to root against his team. Nothing personal. Nothing meanspirited. But in negotiations, leverage is everything. And given that Nylander is one of the rare potential Toronto wingers with at least a track record of playing centre, his leverage was strengthened here.
Not that Leafs GM Kyle Dubas should have been dialing Nylander’s agent in desperation. But after two straight first-round playoff exits, home ice probably should be a priority in Toronto. A month-plus of regular-season games, while they shouldn’t be the reason Dubas rushes into an ill-advised deal, can’t be dismissed as completely meaningless, either. But Nylander’s contract, compared to Matthews’ health, ranks as a footnote. Goal scorers like Toronto’s No. 34 are the rarest of talents. They can also be the biggest of targets. And the NHL, as much as Columbus coach John Tortorella has criticized it for becoming the No Hate League, and as a result the No Hitting League, can still be a ruthless place.
Matthews has been finding that out more and more. Heading into Monday, no NHL forward had taken more hits this season, according to NaturalStatTrick.com. In 11 games, he’d been the target of 26 recorded bodychecks. Zach Hyman, who led the league in absorbing such punishment the past two seasons, had taken 25. That was a marked change from last season, when Matthews finished 122nd among forwards in the category and took about a hit less per game than his current rate. Matthews, in other words, was paying a price for his earlyseason scoring explosion.
As one NHL observer said: “When he gets back, he’s going to be even more of a target.”
Indeed, if you’re writing opposing scouting reports it doesn’t take a lot of ingenuity to spot a coming game against the high-scoring centreman with the bad shoulders and wonky back and suggest an antidote might be maximum physical punishment. Not that a hotshot young athlete like Matthews, the lab-built vision of an ideal player, hasn’t worn a bull’s-eye all his life.
The question now, though, gets more pressing. Can he adapt and prosper? Or will a fan base be setting its watches to his next prognosis for years to come?
Given the vastness of his gift, the former still seems far more likely. But the latter is a scary thought, and suddenly top of mind.