Auston Matthews passes Maple Leafs legend in key statistic

Auston Matthews and the Toronto Maple Leafs may have been snake-bitten to start the 2025-26 NHL season. Despite many glorious offensive chances, Matthews managed to only get one puck past the opposing goaltender on a whopping 15 shots on goal in his first three games of the year. 

But on Tuesday, the Maple Leafs captain finally broke out with his first multi-goal game of 2025-26 with two goals against the Nashville Predators. In doing so, Matthews suddenly found himself a part of the Leafs record books. With his 64th career game-winning goal scored against the Predators, it moved him past Maple Leafs legend Dave Keon into second on the all-time list. Matthews now trails only Mats Sundin, who put up 79 game winners during his 13-year tenure with Toronto.

Auston Matthews passes Leafs legend in key statistic

With the way that Matthews scores goals practically in his sleep, everyone knew many Leafs records would fall in the process. But no one really expected him to even come so close to the game-winning goals record so fast in his career. For Keon, it took him 1062 games to accumulate the 63 game winners in his career, whereas for the leader in Sundin, despite his knack for coming up clutch for Toronto throughout his time here, he managed to record his 79 over 981 games.

As for Matthews, he has already 64 in just 633 career games with the Maple Leafs, meaning that he practically has one game-winning goal almost every 10 games of action. And at only the young age of 28 and assuming he stays healthy, the Leafs captain is bound to smash Sundin’s record by a huge margin when all is said and done.

But of course, if you ask Matthews himself, his focus likely isn’t on smashing records, but to guide this Maple Leafs team instead to success and to get to the next level. On the season, he has recorded three goals and one assist for four points to help Toronto even up their record to 2-2-0 on the season. They will now look to build upon their offensive outburst in which they scored seven goals on Tuesday against Nashville as they face a stronger squad in the New York Rangers on Thursday.

With Matthews officially back in scoring mode for the Leafs, look for the star center to continue his momentum heading into the end of the week and beyond as he aims to shatter more team records along the way.