Toronto Maple Leafs: Why Risk Matthews?
By James Tanner
Toronto Maple Leafs franchise player Auston Matthews is a game-time decision for tonight’s game against the Wild.
Which begs the question: Why? Why wouldn’t the Toronto Maple Leafs just take a cautious approach?
Matthews is the Leafs best and most important player. The season still has about 65 games to go. Teams that know he’s nursing an injury will run him. Any risk with your best player, in November seems idiotic.
The Leafs have Josh Leivo on the bench. They have Kasperi Kapanen in the minors. Nikita Soshnikov needs to get in some games to avoid going to the KHL. The would-be-anyone-else’s franchise player, Mitch Marner, is wasting away on the fourth line.
The Leafs have options.
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Surely a game or two without Matthews is preferable to six-to-eight weeks without him? Iron Man streaks are pretty stupid. Who cares if you have to take a few games off? The reward for playing Matthew tonight is, at best , two points. The Risk seems huge – though I obviously don’t know what’s wrong with him.
Monday
On Monday he was doubtful, but he ended up playing. Nick Kypreos – who said he’d be running him if he was out there and knew he was hurt – also said that he looked slower. I don’t know if that was just confirmation bias, but he looked fine to me.
Another announcer – I forget who – suggested he’d likely had his injury frozen prior to game time. I know this is a common practice, but why? It’s November. You have to slog your way through over 100 games between preseason and playoffs, so why do players insist on playing injured?
Auston Matthews is too important to the Leafs to risk his health for a single game or a few games. Hockey Culture loves to venerate ‘character’ guys who play through the pain, but has anyone ever stopped to think how objectively stupid this tough-guy attitude is?
In fact, it’s bizarre that any team, but especially one that is so deep and has so many NHL players in the minors and the press box, wouldn’t regularly spell it’s players.
Would it not make sense to give ever player a couple of nights rest here and there? As Matthews was quoted yesterday as saying (and I’m paraphrasing): ‘you’re never 100%.’ This begs the question why not? If coaches gave players more rest, they’d probably be better in the long run. Also, the marginal differences between most players would likely be made up by having the players coming into the lineup being fully helpful and rested.
This is just a theory, but I feel like a coach who regularly made sure all his players were healthy and rested would get a slight edge against the rest of the league.
Either way, Matthews should sit for a few and rest up.