The Toronto Maple Leafs are on their longest road-trip of the season right now, but that hasn’t slowed down Auston Matthews.
If you look at WynnBET right now, Toronto Maple Leafs superstar, Auston Matthews is the third favorite to win the Rocket Richard Trophy this year. Current odds still have Ovechkin and Draisaitl ahead of him.
The Edmonton Oilers and Leafs have both played 34 games, and Draisaitl has three more goals than Matthews, so that’s justified, although Matthews has missed three games. The Washington Capitals have played 37 games and Ovechkin only has 24 goals, one more than Matthews.
Having three games in-hand and only being one goal back is such an advantage for Matthews,. As shown by the game against the Colorado Avalanche on Saturday night, he can score two goals easily against one of the best teams in the league.
Imagine what he can do against bad teams?
Catching up to Draisaitl may be harder, but Matthews is still gaining on him, and Draisaitl can’t score on a quarter of his shots forever.
Matthews has scored at a 0.79 goals per game average last year and a 0.67 goals per game average the year before, so him continuing to pace at the level he’s at right now is way more believable than Draisaitl continuing his pace.
Toronto Maple Leafs Star Will Be Rocket Richard Trophy Favorite in a Few Weeks
Auston Matthews scored 41 goals in 53 games last year, so he knows how to go on a hot streak. With 49 remaining games could he score at a similar pace to last year?
The answer is “YES!”, and it starts against the Arizona Coyotes on Wednesday night.
In Toronto’s next seven games, three of them are against bottom-five teams in Goals Against.
- Arizona Coyotes (2nd worst in NHL)
- New Jersey Devils (4th worst in NHL)
- Detroit Red Wings (5th worst in NHL, stats: foxsports.com)
Matthews is not only the best goal-scorer in the NHL, but he’s the best 5v5 goal-scorer as well, which makes a difference when playing these terrible teams. Not only will be dominate them on the power-play, but he’s going to destroy them in every other facet of the game and try to score a million goals against everyone of these teams.
As everyone knows, the Coyotes are his boy-hood team, so there’s nothing more meaningful to him than scoring against them. Factor in that the Coyotes are the worst defensive team in the NHL and you know he’s going to try to score a hat-trick, if not more.
We’ve seen Matthews score four goals in a game before, so it wouldn’t be shocking to see it happen again, against one of these abysmal teams.
I’m sure Matthews isn’t motivated by sports gambling odds, but he definitely when it comes to awards and allocates. Since the NHL hasn’t played a full season in two years, Matthews has yet to score 50 goals in a season, which is definitely something he wants to do.
In addition to scoring 50 goals, Matthews definitely wants to break Rick Vaive’s Toronto Maple Leafs single-season goal record of 54 goals, so he needs to rack up as many goals as he can, against these terrible defenses.
As an underdog in the Rocket Richard Trophy race right now, take out a loan and bet it on Matthews because by the end of the month, he’s going to be in the lead and the favorite to win this award once again.