I was very tempted to take the under on Auston Matthews scoring 60 goals again this season.
Scoring 60 is hard. So much needs to go right, health and luck especially (not to mention ridiculous talent). Only 23 players, total, have done it.
The group to score 60 or more at least three times is even more exclusive: Wayne Gretzky (five), Mike Bossy (five), Mario Lemieux (four), Phil Esposito (four), Brett Hull (three).
Matthews has two such seasons already.
I just couldn’t bet against him doing it again this season. I figured Matthews would score 60 for the third time, with good health. And while I might still be right, it’s not looking good at the moment.
After 13 games this fall, Matthews has only five goals, one of which was banked into an empty net. That puts him on pace for 32, less than half of the 69 he managed last season.
Matthews has scored two five-on-five goals after leading the league with 38 a year ago.
Auston Matthews was held to one assist against the Wild Sunday night. (Brace Hemmelgarn / Imagn Images)
Now, only three more goals would have Matthews on pace for 51, so the trajectory can (and probably will) turn quickly at some point.
Yet Matthews hasn’t felt quite as inevitable shooting the puck so far this season. He still doesn’t have a multi-goal game to his name. At this point last fall, Matthews had four multi-goal games, including three (!) hat tricks.
I see three main culprits behind the slow (for his standards) start:
He’s had bad luck/isn’t converting his chances
Matthews is shooting what would be a career-low 8.9 percent. Last season was the opposite: He shot a career-high 18.7 percent.
Matthews is shooting just 5.9 percent at five-on-five, down from over 15 percent last season, and 5.9 percent on the power play, down from almost 25 percent.
The rate of attempts hasn’t budged much on either front from last season.
Look back to last year and Matthews was beating goalies from everywhere (with a couple goals that didn’t even make the shot chart!):
Matthews’ 22 goals from midrange were in the NHL’s 99th percentile. In other words, nobody was better at ripping it from between the hashmarks.
Matthews is still getting those shots this season — he entered Sunday’s game still in the 99th percentile on midrange shots — but they aren’t sailing past goalies like they were.
Nor are his looks in tight, like the near miss he had on Filip Gustavsson in Minnesota.
The power play has been a dead zone
A career-best 18 of the 69 goals Matthews had last season came on the power play. This season, he has just the one.
He continues to get his shots there (and created a goal for William Nylander on Sunday night), but the quality of looks has unquestionably dipped amid the shocking troubles of the Leafs’ No. 1 unit.
Where have all the one-timers gone?
His minutes have been more onerous this season
Craig Berube’s unwillingness to use David Kämpf-led groups for defensive zone faceoffs comes with a price: more of that burden is placed on Matthews. (Is that a tradeoff the Leafs are willing to stick with?)
Matthews and running mate Mitch Marner have lined up for 54 defensive zone faceoffs at five-on-five, tops among the team’s forwards. Last season, Matthews trailed both John Tavares and Kämpf in that department. Matthews’ 18.4 D-zone draws per 60 minutes this season would rank as the second-highest mark of his career, up from 14.6 last year and 12.9 the season before that.
If not Kämpf, a third line that can really defend would help ease some of that burden. But the Leafs don’t have that, obviously.
Not only is Matthews starting more in his own zone, which means digging out to get cooking on offence, but the Leafs are hanging down there more than they did.
Matthews is spending about 40 percent of his even-strength minutes in the defensive zone, up from 38 percent last season. Conversely, Matthews’ O-zone time has dipped from 43.6 percent to 42.2 percent this season.
Those numbers don’t include Sunday’s game against the Wild, which saw Matthews’ unit frequently defending.
The Matthews-led top line hasn’t been capital-D dominant either, perhaps as a result. The Leafs are surrendering 2.74 expected goals per 60 minutes with Matthews on the ice. That would be the second-worst number of his career.
A full-time penalty-killing role, meanwhile, means Matthews is expending energy elsewhere, and grabbing slightly fewer minutes at five-on-five.
In Minnesota, Matthews logged almost four minutes short-handed.
This will turn around. A heater is coming. For one thing, Matthews’ luck should turn. The power play can’t possibly continue to be this bad. And perhaps Berube will look to ease Matthews’ responsibilities somehow so he can do what he does best for the Leafs: score goals.
Maybe Matthews isn’t getting 60. Another Rocket Richard Trophy, though? Matthews is only five goals back of the league leaders. I still like his chances there.
Points
1. Matthews’ start this fall looks somewhat similar to the beginning of his 2021-22 season. Coming off August wrist surgery, Matthews had six goals and 12 points in the first 13 games that year while shooting 10.7 percent. He had 54 goals (and 94 points) in the next 60 games.
2. Matthews currently has more assists (six) than goals (five). Only once has he finished an NHL season with more assists than goals: 2022-23, with 45 assists and 40 goals.
3. The Leafs started overtime in Minnesota with Matthews and Marner up front, followed by Nylander and Max Domi, and then Max Pacioretty. Where was Matthew Knies, who trails only Nylander among Leafs with six goals this season? Knies has yet to take a shift in two OTs this fall.
4. There are signs Berube will try to find some more ice for Nylander. Nylander logged only his second 20-minute game of the season in St. Louis on Saturday and while he dipped to just under 18 minutes in Minnesota, his coach went out of his way to find him something extra. Berube double-shifted Nylander with the fourth line at one point and continued sending Nylander out for the odd shift with Matthews and Marner.
William Nylander seems to have been successful in his request for more ice time. (Brace Hemmelgarn / Imagn Images)
Another way he might boost Nylander’s ice time moving forward: bring him back onto the penalty kill.
The Leafs could use another killer, especially on those nights when Pontus Holmberg isn’t playing. Consider what happened on Sunday night: Lane Lambert, the assistant coach overseeing the PK, used only four forwards for the Wild’s four-minute power play. The four: Matthews, Marner, Kämpf and Knies.
Why not add Nylander there?
5. What sticks out about Joseph Woll’s first three starts this season: He’s getting beat from deep. Woll has surrendered eight goals in total. Six of those (on 44 shots) have come from medium and long range, per NHL Edge.
6. Marc Savard should steal a trick out of Spencer Carbery’s playbook for power-play prep. Now the Washington Capitals head coach, Carbery ran the Leafs power play to great effect as an assistant coach for two seasons. One thing Carbery did was hold PP1-only sessions before skates. They were walk-throughs, essentially, of what the unit was trying to accomplish. And they worked: The Leafs had the No. 2 power play in the league those two seasons, with modest success in the postseason. When Carbery left for the Capitals, those walk-throughs disappeared. It may be time to bring them back.
7. What made the Leafs’ latest tweak to the power play — a five-forward first unit — especially intriguing: Installing Marner at the top, where he can operate as QB to Matthews and Nylander on the flanks.
8. Berube has talked at times about the lack of shooting luck on the power play. And while there is obviously an element of that, the Leafs also entered Sunday’s game in Minnesota sitting below the 50th percentile in time spent in the offensive zone on the power play at 55 percent.
That number was over 60 percent during the 2021-22 season and 59 percent the year after that.
The Leafs coach has also been unhappy with the lack of shots. And indeed, the Leafs rank 13th in shot attempt rate on the power play.
9. Sitting first in the NHL in high-danger shot attempts at five-on-five this season: Knies, with 22 in the first 13 games. (Knies totalled 73 such attempts all of last season.)
Five of his six goals have come from high-danger zones.
10. The Leafs are outscoring teams 11-4 with Tavares on the ice at five-on-five. They don’t use their former captain at all at four-on-four though, or on three-on-three for that matter.
Stock watch
Stock up: Max Pacioretty’s physicality
Knies leads the Leafs with 33 hits. Tied for second, with 32 in three fewer games, including 15 in the past three games? That would be Pacioretty, who is mustering over 15 hits per 60 minutes.
Max Pacioretty isn’t afraid to throw his body around. (Dan Hamilton / Imagn Images)
Pacioretty’s physicality down low in the offensive zone is partly how he’s begun to carve a niche for himself on a second line with Tavares and Nylander. He clearly still has some skill left and a brain for the game that hasn’t dulled with age.
Pacioretty could turn into one of GM Brad Treliving’s best buys of the offseason — if he can stay healthy and productive.
Stock down: Depth scoring
The Leafs have scored one goal or fewer four times already this season, including in Sunday’s OT loss to the Wild. They have two goals or fewer in six of 13 games.
Matthews not scoring like usual is part of that. So is the power-play dysfunction and scoring depth that has been lacking.
Domi doesn’t have a goal this season (and has zero points in his last seven games). Neither do Kämpf, Holmberg or Ryan Reaves. Nick Robertson was supposed to be the wild-card scorer. He’s chipped in one goal in 11 games and has managed one shot or less eight times already.
Oliver Ekman-Larsson has one goal in 13 games. Jake McCabe hasn’t scored.
Marner doesn’t fall into the depth category, obviously. But, it should be noted, he’s scored only twice in 13 games.
Things I Think I Think
The Leafs kind of need the Jani Hakanpää experiment to work out
Hakanpää should make his Leafs debut in the near future, presumably knocking Conor Timmins out of the lineup. (Will the coaching staff shuffle around the pairs in the name of balance or connect Hakanpää with Simon Benoit?)
Trading Timothy Liljegren means the Leafs simply have less insurance in the event Hakanpää can’t contribute. That insurance is now Timmins, Philippe Myers, Dakota Mermis and, for now, Matt Benning.
I liked the bet on Hakanpää. It was low-risk, with moderate upside. But subtracting Liljegren increases the stakes.
— Stats and research courtesy of Natural Stat Trick, Hockey Reference, Stathead, NHL Edge and Evolving Hockey
(Top photo of Auston Matthews: Brace Hemmelgarn / Imagn Images)
