Stephen
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Don't think his 48 goal season was his rookie year. But he definitely did beat out Bobby Hull for the Calder in 1958.
Auston Matthews Discussion Thread
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Don't think his 48 goal season was his rookie year. But he definitely did beat out Bobby Hull for the Calder in 1958.
CantLoseWithMatthews
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Fun fact: The Leafs have scored as many goals (16) in the 240 minutes Matthews has played at 5v5 as the 471 minutes he hasn't played. Even the Oilers have managed to score more goals with McDavid off the ice than on the ice
I want to say that’s because Matthews has been great (which he has) but that stat is pretty bad when you have a lineup consisting of a 1A and we’ll call it 1C (better than a 2nd line but with matthews and marner you can’t really give this team a 1B). With that being said just by watching the games i didn’t think our secondary scoring has been that bad. I’d be interested to see how that split is across the league for top scorers/team.
LeafsNation75
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How many of those Oilers goals with McDavid not on the ice is Leon Draisaitl responsible for scoring? So it's easy to look at a stat like that and not remember how they are also 1st and 2nd in points so far this season.
Critical13
Fear is the mind-killer.
You're not wrong but it’s still a great stat to show how we’re completely dependant on our top line right now.
Really missing Thornton and Robertson at the moment.
TopChedder
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And Simmonds. He just brings a whole other dynamic to our team, especially on the PP.
LeafsNation75
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Is it a coincidence that the Leafs power play has not scored since Simmonds got injured and been out of the lineup?
SeaOfBlue
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To be fair we've only had 5 PP's in those 3 games (vs. 4 in Simmonds' last game alone, where we scored 1 goal on the PP), and it is not like we haven't generated good opportunities off of them. I think there was even a goal which happened just seconds after the PP expired and before the guy came into the play.
So a bit of a coincidence. We will see how we do against Ottawa.
LeafsNation75
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LeafsNation75
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CantLoseWithMatthews
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Matthews is still tied with the rest of the team are still tied at 5v5 with 18 goals for each. Just looking at each team in the North division, he's the only one doing that.
Calgary: 10 goals with Gaudreau, 18 without
Edmonton: 16 goals with McDavid, 22 without
Montreal: 11 goals with Suzuki, 22 without
Ottawa: 8 goals with Tkachuk, 19 without
Vancouver: 16 goals with Pettersson, 23 without
Winnipeg: 11 goals with Scheifele, 22 without
Pretty great work by Matthews, as he's clearly the Hart front runner at this point. But unfortunately, the rest of the team needs to start pulling their weight a bit more
Calgary: 10 goals with Gaudreau, 18 without
Edmonton: 16 goals with McDavid, 22 without
Montreal: 11 goals with Suzuki, 22 without
Ottawa: 8 goals with Tkachuk, 19 without
Vancouver: 16 goals with Pettersson, 23 without
Winnipeg: 11 goals with Scheifele, 22 without
Pretty great work by Matthews, as he's clearly the Hart front runner at this point. But unfortunately, the rest of the team needs to start pulling their weight a bit more
LeafsNation75
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If Matthews wins the Rocket Richard should that make him a Hart Trophy finalist and the favorite to win it? Because what if McDavid win another Art Ross will he also be a Hart Trophy favorite?
Has a player ever won the hart when they had a linemate out produce them? Doesn't sound likely.
Matthews great play just goes to show how overpaid and over-rated Tavares is. 1A and 1B? No way.
Stephen
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The 5 on 5 downgrade from the Matthews line to the Tavares line is hard to stomach when you consider the idea is to roll those 1A and 1B centres. I wonder if we might have to consider separating Matthews and Marner for a time, let Marner run the Tavares line as the line driver and let Matthews and resuscitate Nylander?
CantLoseWithMatthews
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Tavares is closer to Kerfoot/Spezza than Matthews. He's currently tied with Kerfoot in 5v5 points (although fewer goals) and is being outproduced by Spezza. The Leafs already tried using the 3rd line to give Tavares light minutes and that didn't work, so having a linemate like Marner or Matthews carry him might be worth a shot
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I don't think so but Ovechkin has finished Top10 in Hart voting a couple times despite getting outscored by Backstrom/Kuznetsov (who didn't get Hart votes).
But Matthews is such a unique player. He's a two-way center who happens to be the best goal scorer in the league. A few more points from Mitch obviously doesn't make him more valuable than Matthews.
Mickey Marner
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Teeder Kennedy and Frank Nighbor are the only two, no one recently. Some others have finished ahead in voting of linemate, but that's also uncommon.
saffronleaf
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this is what we probably need to do. and in some select situations deploy the matthews-marner duo (maybe with one of JT / willy).
Mickey Marner
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I don't see any other option at this point. We only have one line clicking. If we add a decent winger we could even put Matthews, Marner and Nylander on three seperate lines and hopefully get the Kerfoot line going.
Stephen
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Or maybe you put Tavares on the LW first line as the old slow veteran and let Joe Thornton run the second line for a time.
Critical13
Fear is the mind-killer.
The problem is that you risk breaking up the best line in hockey. I would be much more interested in shuffling players below that line before I consider breaking it up.
The top line is literally the difference between us and Vancouver right now lol. We'd have 4-5 fewer wins if they weren't dominating.
Mickey Marner
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No better time to try it out than right now against Ottawa. We've already been embarrassed and any points we leave on the table aren't going to a team in competition for the playoffs.
Stephen
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I think the takeaway is we have 2x top end players and we may have to spread out the wealth. Aka do you want to go stack a dominant like for 22 minutes a night or spread it out and have 2 functional scoring lines for 40 minutes a night. There’s no easy answer.
saffronleaf
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this a fair point. there's a trade-off. I think we have time to experiment though and then make a decision with some data, given that it's still a bit early and we have a good record.
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