A Way Too Early Look At Toronto Maple Leafs Contending For NHL Awards
The Toronto Maple Leafs have some of the best hockey players in the world on their team.
Despite yearly playoff shortcomings, the talent on this roster has put various Toronto Maple Leafs in the position to contend and win NHL Awards at the end of the regular season.
Last year, Auston Matthews won the Rocket Richard trophy, awarded to the player who scored the most regular-season goals. He also finished second in voting for the Frank J. Selke Award for the best defensive forward.
Coming into the 2024-2025 season, it is reasonable to expect Auston Matthews to be in the conversation for multiple awards again, but can we expect any other Maple Leafs to take home some hardware?
Let's look at the various personal regular season awards and see which Toronto Maple Leafs can find themselves in the mix at the end of the season.
Toronto Maple Leafs Contending For NHL Awards
Rocket Richard Trophy - Auston Matthews
Matthews ran away with this award early last year; he finished the year with 12 more goals than Sam Reinhart, who finished second in goal-scoring.
Matthews's 69 goals last year were the most scored by any player in the NHL's salary cap era, breaking the previous record of 65 by Alex Ovechkin in 2005-06.
The most impressive part about Matthews winning the Rocket Richard for the third time in four years was his having to outpace Reinhart's absurd 24.46% shooting percentage to reach 57 goals.
Reinhart outperformed his career shooting percentage by 9%, whereas Matthews only outperformed his career shooting percentage by 2.5%.
Not even a guy with insane puck luck could keep pace with 34 on the Maple Leafs last year.
Matthews is simply the best goal-scorer in the world; again this year, he will be playing with Mitch Marner and/or Max Domi.
Matthews has won this trophy in three of the last four years and has finished in the top three in goal-scoring in four of the previous five seasons. With him likely to play alongside two phenomenal playmakers, Matthews will likely take home this trophy again in 2024-25, barring injuries.