Toronto Maple Leafs: Auston Matthews Early Season Frustrations

Auston Matthews is by no means a dirty player, but the fact he’s found himself in the penalty box the past three Toronto Maple Leafs games speaks volumes. (Note: Prior to last night’s game).

It speaks to a combination of frustration and on at least one occasion, the need to commit a penalty to bail out his Toronto Maple Leafs teammates.

In a nutshell, it is the state of the Toronto Maple Leafs at this point of the season. Despite a winning record, they’re looking bereft of confidence and it’s rubbing off on their star center.

Through ten games so far, Auston Matthews has just three goals to his name and although he’s still scoring at an almost point-per-game pace, his penalty minutes are massively up on previous seasons.

Toronto Maple Leafs Can’t Afford Matthews’ Penalties

If he were to maintain his current pace with regards to penalty minutes, he would be looking at 49 penalty minutes by season end (per Elite Prospects). This is a statistic that should concern the Toronto Maple Leafs.

After all, it’s up to two minutes spent without the league’s leading goal scorer the past two seasons on the ice, every time he commits an infraction.

Now this isn’t to say that he needs to not take a single penalty for the Toronto Maple Leafs; the odd high-sticking or holding infraction is going to occur in the offensive zone and he’s not back-checking hard enough if it doesn’t result in the odd call against in the defensive zone too.

On occasion, the team’s skill at scoring shorthanded goals, evidenced in their league-leading 13 tallies last season is going to bail him out too.

Certainly it did with Calle Jarnkrok’s shorthanded goal while he was sitting for what you might deem a ‘required’ slashing penalty against the Anaheim Ducks.

The Toronto Maple Leafs, rest assured, will be wanting to turn around this rough start and get their confidence back. Some of that is going to come from putting Auston Matthews in the best spot to succeed; after all, he’s the team’s best player.

It’s not the worst thing that Auston Matthews is racking up some penalty minutes, at least from the external perspective it shows he’s trying.

A deeper look though highlights a different perspective – the penalty calls he’s taking are due to laziness, sometimes on his part, sometimes on the part of his teammates.

Until the Toronto Maple Leafs can fix these failings, they’re likely going to continue with their struggles to get going and play a game that properly represents the talent on their roster.

Let’s just hope that this frustration that is boiling over into taking penalties right now can be channeled into goal scoring at some point.

Forget the lofty 70-goal target people were talking about at the start of the season; right now Toronto Maple Leafs fans would simply settle for a few game-winning goals from number 34.