The Toronto Maple Leafs have strung together four consecutive wins and Matthews continues to get on the scoresheet early in the game with yet another first period goal. When playing on the road, getting that first goal of the game is huge and our boy Auston seems to do it more often than not.
As of now, Matthews has nine first period goals, which puts him behind the one and only Sidney Crosby who has twelve. Matthews is fifth in goals and just one behind number two selection overall, Patrik Laine. Auston is tied with Tyler Seguin for shots on goal with 130, only Brent Burns and Alexander Ovechkin have more (144, 138). Now let’s keep in mind that Matthews is a rookie at nineteen years of age and hasn’t exactly been getting legitimate top line minutes.
In the last 16 games Matthews has 12 goals and five assists, he’s currently riding a five-game point streak where he’s scored four times and three assists. He’s on fire. In that 16 game span the Leafs as a whole have racked up 20 points.
Auston seems to be clutch on the road, scoring 13 goals in 18 games and a total of 21 points with a +6 rating. That’s outstanding for a rookie. Oddly enough he has the same shot total at home as he does on the road, seems like it will be a matter of time before the puck starts going in more often at the ACC for number 34.
Babcock has done a marvelous job at giving Matthews ample opportunities to succeed as well as pumping his tires with confidence when he was in a scoring funk. It seems Babcock really knows what buttons to push and at just the right time with each of his players. The coaching staff had Matthews watching a large magnitude of footage of both Sidney Crosby and Henrik Zetterberg as they figured “why not have him learn from the best?…
Could it be that Auston Matthews will be the next Maple Leafs Captain?
Leafs Frederik Andersen was taking a bit more time to adjust to his new team, but Babcock knew exactly what route to guide Freddie down and since then he’s been one of the Maple Leafs best and most important players.
The rebuild is beyond the preliminary stages and is really starting to flourish for this young Leafs team. It’s a thing of beauty after all those pitiful seasons!
With the road trip being a huge success, the Leafs now have to prepare themselves for the Centennial classic game against the Detroit Red Wings. If you recall, the Leafs played against the Red Wings at the Winter Classic in 2014 at the Big House in Michigan. The Leafs ended up winning the game when Bozak scored the winner in a shootout; I assure you Babcock wanted that win. Let’s hope the boys in the blue and white are ready to play outdoors for a full sixty minutes and really hand it to the Red Wings.
The 2016/17 Red Wings in the overall picture look like a bag of beaten up garbage. They have a number of players who are way past their prime and are hanging on by a thread. They also have a few injuries and a number of players who have been snake bitten most of this season. What happened to the emergence of Tatar, Nyquist and Larkin? The Wings have been struggling to put the puck in the net which leads me to believe if the Leafs can rifle a few pucks passed Mrazek they should have no problem tossing the wings in the deep fryer and squeezing out another two points.
I’ll be at the Centennial Classic with a group of eleven and will certainly be fully decked out in my Leafs gear. The plan will be to prime up with a quality pre game warm up and then prepare to cheer the boys onto their fifth straight victory against Mike Babcock’s former team. I’m pumped for this one!
A big congrats to Antoine Bibeau for his first NHL win last night.
Hopefully everyone enjoyed their 2016 and will have an even better year in 2017.
All the best to my readers and I hope you all have a safe and exciting New Years.
Thanks again for your support.