More success than ottawa between 2017-2024 is coming up in the rafters soon
I loled, but actually change it to 2018 because Ottawa made the 3rd round in 2017, something the Leafs haven't done since 2002
The scoring looks different because Stutzle played more games. Matthews was injured on his ELC and then covid shortened 2 seasons of his prime. His scoring pace has always been consistent.
Matthews is not a 1 or 2 season thing, his scoring rate has been consistently the best in the league since he entered it. And once again, conveniently ignoring the massive, MASSIVE gap in defense between the two (nvm the size)
Fair point but injuries are part of the game, missing games is not the player's fault but it lowers his end result contribution
Stutzle 20-21 y/o : 160 pts in 153 games, 1.05 PPG
Matthews 20-21 y/o : 136 pts in 130 games, 1.05 PPG
Matthews is a great player, 9th in PPG since he entered the league and 1st in goals per game. You don't remember the controversial poll I made about Matthews being a generational goal scorer?
And I'm not ignoring anything. Stutzle defensive game is hard to bring up at this point because :
- he has played on a rebuilding team coached by DJ Smith... People quickly ignore this but new management/ownership only came a year ago (not even). It was a big mess in Ottawa for 6 years before that.
- the VAST majority of forwards are initially not great defensively, which also was the case for Crosby and McDavid, for example.
By the way, he has already shown stretches of playing great defensive hockey. It's about finding the consistency, which should be helped by playing with better goaltending, coaching, defensive players in a better system? That part is even more "way too early" to analyze than offense.
I'll leave you this below, which was the first 2 months of the 2022-23 season, to show Stutzle's potential :