Before we dig into the business of the Toronto Maple Leafs‘ 4-1 Festivus celebration over the Columbus Blue Jackets, let’s flash back to something Jon Cooper said about Auston Matthews in April 2022.
“[He is] shooting from so many angles, plus he’s not afraid to shoot. That’s why you get 50, 60 goals a year. You don’t care. You’re just gonna keep shooting. When you have that arsenal of weapons he has and the way he shoots, I wouldn’t be surprised if sometime in his career he gets 70.”
At the time of the Tampa Bay Lightning coach’s quote, the more skeptical members of Leaf Nation wondered if Cooper was playing mind games, if he was gassing up the opposition’s MVP in the leadup to the first Lightning-Leafs playoff series. (Which Tampa did win.)
Seventy goals? C’mon.
No one has pumped that many pucks into the net in more than 30 years, when a young Teemu Selanne and Hall of Fame snub Alexander Mogilny ripped 76 apiece.
And that includes Alex Ovechkin, arguably the greatest goal scorer of all-time, whose most prolific campaign topped out at 65. Ditto Connor McDavid. Mike Bossy topped out at 69.
Maybe Cooper was simply being kind.
Or maybe he saw this freight train coming.
With a pair of blistering one-timers Saturday, thanks to buttery passes from reunited linemate Mitch Marner, Matthews heads into the holidays hotter than the pistol Millie pulled on Santa.
Goals in seven straight games. Twelve in his past nine. Ten multi-goal nights this season. He’s stuffed the net a league-leading 28 times before your kid’s stocking gets the same treatment.
“When you get confidence, all of a sudden it feels like you can score every shift,” coach Sheldon Keefe told reporters, following Saturday’s decisive victory.
“Now he feels like he can score every time he touches the puck. It’s fun to watch.”
Fun? For sure. Historic? Perhaps.
Matthews, who has missed one game due to illness, is on pace for 76.
Maintaining such an electric rate is difficult to fathom, but the Cooper-predicted 70 should not be dismissed.
Matthews is a career 16 per cent shooter operating at a ridiculous 21.4 per cent in 2023-24.
But he’s matured as a scorer, finding a variety of ways to catch goalies off-guard. And, let’s be frank, the pool of NHL netminders and defenders has been watered down with expansion.
Yes, Matthews will be in tough to keep this streak rolling, but it’s not as if he’s padding his stats with pucks off his pants or garbage-time empty-netters.
There is purpose to his pursuit, and he hasn’t sacrificed backchecking to make it happen.
Further, during Matthews’ 40-goal “down” year in 2022-23, his conversion rate dipped to a career-low 12.2 per cent. So, maybe this is the correction.
“It’s been nice. The puck’s been going in. I just think the mindset every game is just being focused and being present, taking it one shift at a time. Not so much thinking about scoring, just going out there and playing solid at both ends of the ice,” Matthews told Kyle Bukauskas, a Hockey Night in Canada towel draped over his shoulders.
“Scoring a bunch of different ways, which is great for this team and a good bounce-back from the night before.”
Response game? Check!
“Good teams never have two bad games in a row,” Max Domi declared Thursday in the bowels of KeyBank Center, following a 9-3 pasting by the Sabres. “No time to sit here and feel sorry for ourselves.”
Nylander was more succinct: “Pissed off about how we played.”
Be it Thursday’s beatdown in Buffalo or last week’s soft start against these same Jackets, the Maple Leafs were determined to head into the Christmas break with a more respectable effort.
Keefe and his staff invested significant time dissecting that embarrassing loss to the Sabres, which accentuated lingering trends in poor D-zone execution and rush prevention between games 20 to 30.
“There’s a highway to our net,” Keefe declared Saturday morning. “We gotta make it way harder for teams to get to our net.”
That, they did.
The Leafs nabbed an early lead and permitted just two rush chances by Blue Jackets through first 40 minutes. A much more responsible and “complete” performance, Keefe noted.
Toronto got goals in all situations: 5-on-5, 5-on-4, 4-on-4, and 4-on-5.
Jones steps up as Leafs’ third No. 1 goalie of 2023-24
Martin Jones, Toronto’s new (33-year-old) hope in the crease, was rock solid, stopping 27 of 28 shots and improving to 4-1 as a Maple Leaf. The only goal he allowed was on a clear breakaway.
Jones is the best $875,000 of MLSE’s money Brad Treliving ever spent.
Meanwhile, beleaguered backup Ilya Samsonov spent an hour Saturday working on the ice with goalie coach Curtis Sanford.
“We’ve all been through it, and we feel for each other,” Jones said. “Honestly, it’s just something where you try to be a good teammate and push each other in practice.”
A Christmas miracle for the Leafs would be Samsonov returning from the break refreshed and refocused.
Just in case, Treliving will be monitoring the goalie market and waiver wire when the NHL roster freeze thaws next week.
The Leafs face back-to-backs Dec. 29-30 and Jan. 2-3.
Jones can’t start ’em all.
Fox’s Fast Five
• Conor Timmins was a dreadful minus-4 in Buffalo, where his ice time got chopped to 12:29. The playmaking righty got healthy-scratched Saturday in favour of the defensively safer third pairing of Simon Benoit and William Lagesson.
Keefe was also quick to abandon his Morgan Rielly–Timothy Liljegren experiment, reuniting Rielly with T.J. Brodie.
• Frightening scene late in the first period when paramedics were summoned to attend to Columbus centre Sean Kuraly’s abdominal injury.
Out of concern for the player’s health, the game stopped before the buzzer sounded. The teams played the final 18 seconds of Period 1 following intermission.
Good news: Kuraly’s injury “does not appear to be serious,” according to the Jackets. Still, he was taken to Grant Medical Center for further evaluation.
• Taste of the Danforth: Undrafted Oshawa, Ont., native and late bloomer Justin Danforth enjoyed a two-point night in last week’s win in Toronto. The 30-year-old then pumped a breakaway beauty Saturday against his boyhood local team:
• Keefe admits that he has been considering breaking up his third line of Nick Robertson, Max Domi, and Calle Järnkrok.
“It’s on my mind a bit,” the coach said pre-game. “Not necessarily happy with where it’s trending.”
Perhaps the lads caught the quote. That unit registered the best shot-attempt share (72.7 per cent) of all Toronto’s lines versus Columbus.
• Matthews and Morgan Rielly are out here peacefully battling each other for the Lady Byng Trophy:
