Toronto Maple Leafs: Auston Matthews Is Playing on Easy Mode

Toronto Maple Leafs center Auston Matthews is on fire this season. It seems like he is playing on easy mode on route to making history.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are having an all-time great season. They are on pace to break the franchise marks in both goals and points. A big reason for their success is Auston Matthews’ ascension to the top of the NHL.

The magnitude of Matthews’ season is still being measured. He has already broken Rick Vaive’s single-season goal total for a Toronto Maple Leafs player and it appears he is not anywhere near done shattering records. This remarkable run has many more milestones in reach and there’s a good chance Matthews will collect them.

The 24-year-old American scored his 58th goal of the campaign against the Montreal Canadiens in a 3-1 on Saturday. While the total is impressive, what makes it even more astonishing is that goals scored against the Habs were his 50th and 51st in 50 games. It’s the first time it’s been done since Mario Lemieux’s hot streak in 1995-96.

Toronto Maple Leafs and Auston Matthews

While Matthews is already the franchise season leader in goals, he also holds the most even-strength goals in a campaign. Matthews is approaching some all-time markers as well. For his career, Papi has notched 257 goals. That’s just three shy of Wendel Clark’s 260 total goals that he scored while with the Buds. If Matthews manages to match Clark this season, it would not just tie him for the eighth-best goal total but also see him rank high on list for most points in a season by a Leaf.

This season, Matthews has already recorded 99 points, just one shy of the century mark. The most any Leaf has ever recorded in a campaign is 127. That was done by Doug Gilmour, the year Toronto should have won the Cup, 1992-93. Fourth on that list is Darryl Sittler who in 1975-76 hit the century mark himself for the first time. He actually finished the season with 100 points. At the time, it was the highest single-season sum in Leafs history. Sittler managed to top it one year later with 117 points, which is still good enough for the second-best campaign in franchise history. There’s not doubt that Matthews will overtake Sittler’s record from 1976 but beating out the 1977 mark will prove more challenging.

The superstar center is quite possibly the most exciting player to ever wear the blue and white in Toronto. With Matthews under contract through the 2023-24 season, the Maple Leafs will surely see him continue to climb leaderboards and own new franchise records before his time with the team is done.

No matter what happens in the remaining games or even in the playoffs, this has been a notable season for Matthews. It’s one that the history books will always remember and the fans can tell their children and grandchildren about.