The Toronto Maple Leafs are going through a weird time.
On one hand, the Toronto Maple Leafs recently turned over about a third of their roster in the middle of a season where they’d normally be competing for the President’s Trophy.
And, since they’ve known their playoff opponent since October, they have been experimenting wildly.
And Ryan O’Reilly, their keystone acquisition, has only played eight games, and is out with an injury for another few weeks.
On top of that, they’ve been winning regularly, despite playing pretty badly. After a fairly bad west-coast trip, they came home and won against New Jersey, Edmonton, Carolina and picked up a point against the Avs despite not playing very good in any of those games.
They got smoked by the Sabres, and I don’t know what happened last night because this was written yesterday afternoon, but the point is, they aren’t playing well, but they are winning, and it’s hard to know how concerned to be because of the injuries and experimentation.
At least we know they can outscore their problems, and their goalie (Samsonov) is having a great year. That much is encouraging.
Toronto Maple Leafs: Auston Matthews Injury
The worst kept secret in hockey came out this week – Auston Matthews has been playing through a hand injury for most of the season.
That would explain why he isn’t shooting quite as much or scoring quite as much.
But the hilarious thing is that he still has 19 5v5 goals and is only ten off the pace of leader Connor McDavid, while Matthews has scored 2.62 points per 60 minutes of 5v5 icetime to Connor’s 2.75.
Matthews overall is 20th in goals and 29th in points, and climbing. Most impressive is that he still has a 55% expected goals rating, the best on the Leafs, one of the best teams in the NHL. (all stats naturalstattrick.com).
Matthews is clearly the best player alive, when you factor in his MVP season from last year, which was the best individual season in the NHL since Mario Lemieux’s last Hart Trophy, and consider that this year, he is outplaying McDavid at 5v5, and still has a chance to score 50 if he goes on a heater, but will almost certainly score 40 guaranteed.
If you score 40 goals while mostly playing with a bad hand, that is almost a more amazing accomplishment than scoring 51 times in 50 games, which he has also done.
Oh, and he’s the preeminent two-way forward in the NHL, who will likely win a Selke trophy, along with the Hart and Rocket next season when he’s healthy.
Matthews seems to really be kicking it up a notch lately, and it appears he’s healthy just in time for the team to warm up for the playoffs.
Also, Auston Matthews will likely finish this season in 5th place in all-time Toronto Maple Leafs goal scoring. Without this injury, he’d have been 3rd by the end of next season.