You said "Healthy Stu is maybe marginally better offensively than injured Matthews"
You are making a statement as if age wouldn't matter, hence why I specified it to you. Unless you think players peak at 20-21?
It seems that Matthews entered his prime around 23-24 y/o so we don't have the empirical evidence necessary to properly compare yet...
Right but I'm comparing who they are right now and Stutzle might be in his prime, before his prime or even played the best hockey he ever will, we don't know. Barzals best offensive season was his rookie season and it took him another 5 seasons to get back to a PPG, Hyman was a consistent player through what would be considered his prime and suddenly had his best offensive seasons in his 30s.
There are no set paths for players best years but there is pretty blatant evidence that today Matthews is better at hockey than Stutzle in almost every way.
Which is still impossible to compare as Stutzle most likely hasn't entered his prime yet. Unless Stutzle doesn't have this privilege like many players had? (Matthews, Nylander, MacKinnon to name a few) by
Most likely is before his prime, sure. Is this year going to be his prime then? If so, I'm sure most of the hockey world would still pick AM34 coming off a 69 goal season over a potential 1C coming off a 70 point season.
How many seasons until he is better than Auston?
Toronto did not make the playoffs in 2020
Weird, I see maple leafs players with games played and statistics for the playoffs in 2020 but when I look at the Ottawa Senators, who missed the playoffs, I still don't see any playoff statistics.
Maybe because one team played playoff games and the other one couldn't even get into the playoffs with the help of a worldwide pandemic extending the amount of playoff teams.
But you're probably right, this is the Senators year to finally make the playoffs and hopefully play against Toronto in the first round. God knows we need the free pass, which is what your favourite franchise has always been to us.