Toronto Maple Leafs: 10 Best Goals of the Year

The Toronto Maple Leafs are an amazing young team.

Two years into this, and it’s still hard to believe that the Toronto Maple Leafs have Auston Matthews, let alone Mitch Marner  and William Nylander.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have one of the best teams in hockey, and whether or not they’re capable of going far into the playoffs this year, it seems pretty clear that the city is in for an exciting few years.

This year saw the Leafs cruise to a third place finish in the Atlantic, and depending on the Leafs and Washington Capitals’ final game of the season, will either finish sixth or seventh in the overall NHL standings.

Not bad for a team people still insist is rebuilding.

Further confusing the idea that the Leafs are still rebuilding is that Auston Matthews, one of the NHL’s best players, missed about a quarter of the season, and the Leafs still finished as high as they did.  With a fully healthy Matthews the Leafs are easily a top five team, maybe top three.

Maybe #1.

So enough with the ‘rebuilding’ crap. The Toronto Maple Leafs – like every team in the NHL except the current defending champion – are building towards a winner.  Literally no team (even the defending champs) sits there and says ‘our team is perfect, no more attempts to improve’  so just because the Leafs aren’t built perfectly, it doesn’t mean that they are still in a “rebuild.”

Anyways, I’ve digressed, and I’ll get to the point:  the BEST GOALS OF THE  YEAR.

The Editor in Leafs staff has compiled the following goals that we believe are the nicest the Leafs scored all year.  Hopefully there’s lots more to come in the Playoffs, but for now, enjoy.

Goal # 1 Auston Matthews

Here’s a nice one from Auston Matthews from a game against the Montreal Canadiens in October.

Matthews takes a pass from Andersen, then goes almost end to end through the entire Montreal team, then manages to use the last defender as a screen and shoot the puck through his legs to beat Carey Price.

Unfortunately, Kadri didn’t see his because he was writhing in pain on the bench after blocking a shot, but he ended up being OK.

Goal # 2 – Mitch Marner

This Mitch Marner goal is pretty sweet.

What I love about this highlight, is that before they show the replay of the goal, they cut to a play that happened just before, where Bozak banks a perfect pass off the boards to JVR to gain the zone, and then JVR attempt a pass through his legs.  I think if they scored on that, it’d probably be the goal of the year, but this Marner one is good too. Marner extends his point streak to ten when he blasts a shot wide off the board and then one-times his own rebound for a great goal.

Note that both those goals were on Hall of Fame goalies.

Goal #3 Kasperi Kapanen

Kapanen almost chipped the puck by the Bruins defenseman for a clear cut breakaway, but he’s so fast that even though the defenseman almost prevented the turnover, Kapanen is still able to get a breakaway (just not by the ten feet he otherwise would have).  Then, he spins off the defender, does like a cool delay thing, then blasts it home.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are so deep that they have to play this guy on the fourth line.  He’s got great wheels and may be one of the NHL’s fastest skaters.

Goal #4 Mitch Marner

Do you like watching Mitch Marner go end to end and score a sweet goal? Of course you. Everyone does.  Look, he’s doing it now….

As good as Mitch Marner is, he doesn’t get the credit he deserves.  I hope he doesn’t turn out to be a Tracy McGrady because having two franchise players is a pretty rare thing and Marner and Matthews could be something similar to Malkin and Crosby in Pittsburgh.   That’s an impossible standard, but if they come within even 20% of those guys, both will be in the Hall of Fame and the leafs will have won at least one Stanley Cup.

Goals #5,6,7 Auston Matthews

This sweet baby made it 6-0!  Auston Matthews is no Todd Gill, but he’s pretty good nevertheless.

The only thing that prevented Matthews from scoring 40 goals back-to-back to begin his career was that he missed 20 games with injuries – nearly 25% of a full season.  Regardless, he currently has 33 goals and one game to go.  He could even do it – Matthews is so good that I wouldn’t even be that surprised if he scored seven more goals tomorrow.

There is a 100% chance that, if healthy, Matthews would have scored 40 goals.  Only eight NHL players  (and Wayne Gretzky, but he was never officially a rookie) have scored 40 goals in both their rookie and sophomore seasons.  Matthews himself is one of only 15 NHL players to ever score 40 as a rookie.

I know you came here for some goals, but those are some sweet facts.  (Which I looked up on hockeydb.com the greatest website in the world).

Why not do one more, the guy is amazing.

It’s only out respect for Mats Sundin’s feelings that I don’t just declare Auston Matthews the best player in Toronto Maple Leafs history right now.