Toronto Maple Leafs: Auston Matthews Scores 60th Goal

The Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the Detroit Red Wings 3-0 and Jack Campbell had his fifth shut-out of the season.

But what really made this game special was Auston Matthews scoring goals 59 and 60 to set a new Toronto Maple Leafs record and become the first 60 goal scorer the NHL has seen in a decade.

The win clinches home ice in the first round of the NHL playoffs, though it is still to be decided if the Leafs face Tampa or Boston, both of whom won last night.

Boston can finish with enough points to face the Leafs,  if they win both of their last games, and if Tampa fails to win both of theirs in regulation.

If Tampa wins even a single overtime point, they will win the right to play the Leafs, even though you have to figure that both teams would prefer to play Carolina, because, points in the standings aside, the Leafs are a significantly better team than the Hurricanes are.

In fact, even though the media likes to downplay how good the Leafs are, I would bet that they are the last team anyone wants to face, since not only are they throwing out two of the best three players in the world at any given time, but they also have the NHL’s deepest team.

Toronto Maple Leafs vs Detroit Redwings

Even though the outcome of this game didn’t matter, and even though all anyone is going to care about is Auston Matthews scoring his 60th goal, it’s worth pointing out that this was an incredibly dominant game by the Leafs. (naturalstattrick.com).

Usually you’d expect kind of a sloppy game, since they really had nothing to play for it, but if this was an indication of how the Leafs will play in the playoffs, then look out.

They gave Detroit nothing.

The Leafs had 70% puck possession in the first period, and the lowest they had all night was 60% in the third. At 5v5, the Leafs almost doubled Detroit’s scoring chances and shot totals.  They almost tripled them in dangerous chances *(13-5).

Toronto finished the game with a ridiculous 75% expected goals rating.

This was more-or-less a perfect game for the Leafs, and yeah, I know Detroit is bad and had nothing to play for either, but no NHL team should be able to so thoroughly dominate another NHL team, and the Wings should be honestly happy they didn’t allow ten goals against.

It’s too bad there is still one more game, because this would have been a great note to finish on.