Toronto Maple Leafs: Where Does Auston Matthews Rank Among Young NHL Stars?

The Toronto Maple Leafs have some of the best young players in the NHL.

The youth movement in the NHL has been in full form for the past five to ten years, and the Toronto Maple Leafs have been one of the many organizations at the forefront of this change.

The Leafs average age is 26-years-old, being the fifth youngest team in the league behind teams like Colorado, who is the youngest team in the NHL with an average age of 25. (Stats Courtesy of TheAthletic.com)

As the league continues to get younger, more teams are relying on players to make a significant impact, even out of their draft year.

Auston Matthews is one of those players, and he has been able to handle the pressure of not only being a first overall pick, but being in the most impatient hockey market in the world is no easy task.

It just so happens that when I began creating this list, TSN released their ‘Core 4 Under 24’ list made by Senior Hockey Reporter Frank Seravalli about a day later. I decided to stick with the list of my own which I think will provide a different assessment of where each player under the age of 25 is ranked instead.

I think there were not a lot of contextual aspects that were factored in when TSN developed their rankings, and there were a lot of areas I disagreed with, and those reasons are addressed in these descriptions.

So, where does Auston Matthews rank among my 15 best NHL players under 25 list?

(All stats courtesy of HockeyDB.com, NaturalStatTrick.com, and Hockey-Reference.com)