I am not saying anything about Matthews, I love him. My point was that when we look at the top 5 my eyes are in tears. That's really underwhelming numbers for a franchise this old. Take a look at some of the other franchise and how many goals their top player or top 2-3 players have and check what we have. You would need to go cry in a corner and tell yourself everything's gonna be alright(hopefully).
That was his 1st 392 games, as were all the numbers for all the players. If you want absurd, Gretzky had a 4 year stretch at one point in his career when he scored 323 in 314 games.
He would need 45 more goals to get into the top 8 this season. That would be 62 by the end of the year. That's a tall ask.
Add the fact that the dynasties of old were characterized not by high scoring superstars, but rather a group of blue collar, meat and potatoes types.
Yep of all the mismanagement they've had over the years, this one they managed quite well.
I think he is on track for that, we just need to win a PO series soon just to make sure he doesn't entertain thoughts of playing elsewhere, I really don't see anything else stopping him. Amazing player!
That seems fair. Anyhow, I appreciate the hell out of Matthews, I've been watching for just over 50 years and the most natural scorers I've seen are Wendel Clark and Rick Vaive. Both were exciting to watch when they shot the puck but Matthews is obviously a tier or two above those guys. Not just one of the greatest natural goal scorers of all time but a complete two way player, the only Maple Leaf I've ever seen who I would call a true franchise player, and a high end one at that. I predicted very early on that he would go down in history as the greatest Maple Leaf of all time. It was probably a bit early for that but what the hell.
