Toronto Maple Leafs Should Give Auston Matthews Time to Heal

The Toronto Maple Leafs don’t play until Saturday in Edmonton, and while a few days off in a row during the middle of the season is a nice bonus, their best player could use a bit more than that.

The Toronto Maple Leafs should give Auston Matthews an extended break in order to get healthy.

Now, I don’t know for sure that Matthews is injured, but a couple weeks ago the coach did talk about him being banged up, and in addition to missing time earlier in the year, he recently took a puck off the leg (although he did return to that game).

On top of all that, he’s recently been slumping, and while it’s easy to draw erroneous conclusions, it can’t hurt to give him time to heal before the playoffs.

Toronto Maple Leafs Should Give Matthews a Rest

Matthews has just four goals in his last ten games.  That’s a 32 goal pace for a guy coming off a 60 goal season, which, when you factor in time missed, and time recovering from off-season surgery, could easily have been a 70 + goal season.

Shooting Percentage is not something players can control, and Matthews’ percentage is way down this year – from 17.25 to 12.29 this year.   This shows that a lot of the difference between last year and this year is mostly superficial, but that doesn’t explain everything, especially the last stretch ten or so games.

In Matthews last 10 games, in which I already mentioned that he is scoring at a 32 goal pace, he has just a 50.76% Expected Goals Rating, and if not for an unusually high on-ice save percentage during this time the Leafs would likely be losing his minutes.

Compare that to a 57% xGoals rating on the year, and a 64% xGoals rating when he won the Hart Trophy and was the NHL’s best player. (All stats naturalstattrick.com).

It’s clear that something isn’t 100% with him, and so the Toronto Maple Leafs should give him some time to get back to full health, especially since the rest of the season is more or less a set of exhibition games prior to their long predetermined opening round series against Tampa.

A healthy Matthews is more of a factor than every player the Leafs added at the deadline, so getting healthy and ready to go for Game 1 should be the team’s top priority.

It’s time for the Toronto Maple Leafs to shut Auston Matthews down.