TOPS IN T.O.
Where does Matthews rank? The 10 greatest sports seasons in our city’s history
You have almost have to stop yourself, get your emotions in check, gain some perspective to understand exactly what we’re seeing with Auston Matthews this National Hockey League season.
The truth is, we’ve never seen anything like this before. Not up close. Not here in Toronto. Not like this, every week and every game.
Seventy goals is a number that seems surreal. Especially when the most Darryl Sittler scored in a season was 45.
Or the most Mats Sundin scored in Toronto was 41. Doug Gilmour and Dave Keon, truly the greatest of Maple Leafs centres, were more traditional, setting up players rather than scoring themselves.
These are the giants of Maple
Leafs past. Their numbers being trampled on now by Matthews. And it got me thinking, bigger picture, where does Matthews’ season rank among the greatest in Toronto sports history?
And I do love lists. So here is mine, the 10 greatest individual sporting seasons in Toronto, post1960.
1. KAWHI LEONARD, TORONTO RAPTORS, 2019
With load management, Leonard only played 60 regular-season games for the Raptors and they won 42 of them. But it all mattered at playoff time, Leonard’s brilliance, Leonard’s dominance, Leonard’s will to win.
He made the famous fadeaway shot to knock out Philadelphia in Round 2 of the NBA playoffs but what seems forgotten, sort of, is that he scored 41 in that game that eliminated the Sixers.
In Game 3 against Milwaukee, next round, Leonard dragged an injured body through double overtime, playing 52 minutes and scoring 36 points. If the Raptors lose that night, there is no championship to ever talk about and celebrate.
In the NBA Finals against Golden State, Kawhi scored 34 points in Game 2, 30 in Game 3, 36 in Game 4 thus taking home the playoff MVP.
It was only one season in Toronto for Kawhi, but the season should be cherished forever.
2. DOUG GILMOUR, TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS, 1993
There was something about Gilmour that made you want to cheer for him. He was an underdog in size, in shooting ability and even in speed. But he had the unique talent to carry a team and make everyone around him better.
In the 1992-93 season, Gilmour scored a career-high of 127 points and then followed it up with 35 playoff points in 21 games. No Leaf had ever scored more than 21 points in any playoff season or frankly played any better than Gilmour in ’93.
The Leafs should have played for the Stanley Cup that year.
3. AUSTON MATTHEWS, TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS, 2024
This season isn’t over yet. The playoffs have not begun. But what Matthews has done in a spectacular regular season is absolutely stunning.
The 69 goals he has heading into the final two games of the season trounce his own previous 60-goal season and Hart Trophy year — and really, trounce any goal scorer in Leafs history.
This season, Matthews will win the Rocket Richard Trophy and is a candidate for the Hart, the Selke and the Lady Byng. And still, the real judgement of this season will begin next week.
But the opening act ... wow.
4. ROGER CLEMENS, TORONTO BLUE JAYS, 1997
Clemens was an unlikely freeagent signing by the Blue Jays in one of the down periods for the franchise. But no matter what kind of syringes he became familiar with in his time in Toronto, he wound up as the Blue Jays’ first Triple Crown winner, leading the American League in wins, earned run average and strikeouts, plus several other categories.
He ended up with a 21-7 record, a 2.05 ERA and 292 strikeouts. He also led AL pitchers in complete games, shutouts and WAR.
He won his first of two consecutive Cy Young Awards in Toronto with a rather-ordinary Jays team.
5. JOSE BAUTISTA, TORONTO BLUE JAYS, 2015
Everybody remembers the bat flip. That was an emotional moment in time.
In that 2015 season, though, Bautista hit 40 home runs, knocked in 114 RBIS and seemed central to almost everything that this great
Blue Jays team accomplished.
But here’s a Toronto theme: The Jays should have got to the World Series that year. ‘Should have’ is a Toronto thing. There’s a lot of ‘almost’ in the history of Toronto sports.
In Game 6 against the Kansas City Royals in the American League Championship Series, Bautista ended his special season with two home runs and one throw from the outfield he’d like to have back.
6. AUSTON MATTHEWS, TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS, 2022
When the Leafs were winning Stanley Cups in the 1960s, they rarely had candidates for MVP awards. They were more a team than individuals.
Matthews hasn’t been blessed to play for deep teams in his time in Toronto. But in the 2021-22, he became the first Toronto player to score 60 goals and the first Hart Trophy winner for the Leafs in, appropriately, 67 years.
Also, the first, first-team all-star at centre since Syl Apps in 1942. That was something Sittler, Keon, Sundin, Gilmour never attained.
It happens every 80 years of so, kind of a Leafs eclipse of sorts.
7. DOUG FLUTIE, TORONTO ARGONAUTS, 1997
Flutie’s entire CFL career was a highlight film. Just not a lot of it in Toronto.
He played two seasons for the Argos, won two championships and two Most Outstanding Player awards with the first one coming in ’97.
That special year, he threw for 47 touchdown passes, one off his own record, and for a total of 5,505 yards that season.
For understanding of sorts, no one in the NFL threw for more than 36 touchdowns this season or 4,516 yards — and in ’97 Flutie just happened to win the Grey Cup MVP as well.
8. DARRYL SITTLER, TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS, 1977
Sittler scored his most points in ’78, had his record-breaking 10-point game in ’76, but in between those years he shattered a Toronto record for playoff scoring.
In a playoff-hungry Toronto, he had five goals and 16 assists for 21 points in just nine post-season games for the Leafs. That’s 2.3 points per game. The previous playoff record was held by Frank Mahovlich and Jim Pappin at just 15 points.
The 2.3 points per game are the greatest playoff numbers in Leafs history, but the Buds were eliminated in six games by a strong Philadelphia Flyers team in the second round, losing twice in overtime and were outscored 19-18 in the series.
Sittler had 12 points in the six games against Philly.
9. SEBASTIAN GIOVINCO, TORONTO FC, 2017
Championships matter. Toronto doesn’t win many of them away from the CFL. No Stanley Cups since 1967. No World Series since 1993. One NBA championship, ever. And in this case, size didn’t matter.
After the so-called Mighty Mouse arrived in Canada from Italy, he all but took over Major League Soccer. He won the league MVP in 2015. He led TFC to the MLS Cup in 2016.
The next year came the coronation. TFC played 39 games and lost six of them and the striker Giovinco led the team in scoring.
TFC thought that would be the first of many titles. There hasn’t been one since.
10. GEORGE BELL, BLUE JAYS, 1987
Dave Stieb was the first Blue Jay to ever get an MVP vote. That came in 1981. He finished 27th in the balloting.
Slowly others got noticed in the early years of the Jays: Damaso Garcia in ’82, Willie Upshaw and Lloyd Moseby in ’83. But the mercurial Bell was the first real hitting star to get noticed, moving from eighth to fourth to first in three years of MVP voting, becoming the first Toronto player in MLB to win the big award.
Only one Jay has since taken home an MVP. Bell had 47 home runs and 134 RBI in that monster season that fell short on the final days in Detroit. And was any collapse more Toronto than that?
HONOURABLE MENTIONS
Josh Donaldson, Blue Jays 2015; Ed Belfour, Maple Leafs, 2004; Roberto Alomar, Blue Jays, 1992 and 1993; Jozy Altidore, Toronto FC, 2017; Pinball Clemons, Argos, 1990; Vince Carter, Raptors, 2001; Roy Halladay, Blue Jays, 2003; Carlos Delgado, Blue Jays, 2003; Chad Owens, Argos, 2012; Terry Greer, Argos, 1983; Robbie Ray, Blue Jays, 2021; Borje Salming, Maple Leafs, 1977; Frank Mahovlich, Maple Leafs, 1961. Joe Carter, Blue Jays, 1993.