I can’t tell if I’m taking crazy pills or just watching a different game than some of these people. Effort wise he digs in more on D and in the little detail oriented stuff than MacK or McD, the reason those two go further in the playoffs is that they regularly 1v5 the entire other team and make plays that had no business succeeding. Matthews makes shots that have no business going in and he’ll have flashes of that 1v3 brilliance but he’s not doing it on a regular basis game in game out like the other two, that’s the entire difference. It’s not an effort thing, he just doesn’t have mutant freak of nature skating like they do.
If he could float at the blueline and be a near guarantee to bury it every time he got the outlet pass I’d rather him play rover like McD any day, someone else can block shots after the red light goes off. If you ran a full 60 minute game of a Matthews unit against one of those two, even if the Matthews unit played a flawless responsible D game, ran a perfect grinding cycle offensively, got takeaways, had blocks, made hits, did everything as perfect as you could expect, it would still take just 3 or 4 bounces where they have a single stride on you to still lose that game. That’s not on effort that’s on what the good lord gave you.
