Auston Matthews fought through an unspecified injury last season, and there were large stretches where he didn’t play up to the stratospheric standard he’s set during career. There were still plenty of brilliant moments from the Toronto Maple Leafs’ captain, and there are few better examples than Matthews walking the Nashville Predators during a December 4 contest.
With the game tied 1-1 entering the third period, Matthews and Mitch Marner engineered some magic off the rush. Marner headed up the ice with two Predators defenders converging on him, keenly aware that Matthews was behind him as the trailer. Feinting as if he were driving to the net, Marner dropped the puck back to Matthews, who took it from there.
Matthews slid around Gustav Nyquist, putting the puck through his right leg, then nutmegged Juuse Saros for a spectacular goal. It was Matthews’ second goal of the game, his first two-goal game of the year, and for the time being, many believed that he was all the way back to the form he showed two years ago in a 69-goal campaign.
Nyquist is a forward, to be clear, but Matthews still put him on a poster with clever stick-work and short-area awareness. This is just a nerdier way of saying what a sick goal it was, and it’s one of the finest tallies of the Leafs’ season.
This is what I wrote about Matthews’ performance following the 3-2 victory:
Auston Matthews was terrific throughout the game, and this was his best performance since his return from an upper-body injury that kept him out through the majority of November. Matthews registered two goals in two minutes, while adding seven shots and three blocked shots on the evening overall. There’s this misnomer that Matthews was off to a cold start, perhaps relative to his standards prior to the injury and I simply don’t buy that — he led the NHL in individual expected goals at 5-on-5 prior to his injury and was due for positive shooting regression, while playing excellent individual and team defence. There’s little wonder why most of his teammates are perplexed when asked about Matthews’ returning to form. It’s unclear whether Berube will keep the Knies-Matthews-Marner line intact, but it’s a certainly another option he has in his pocket when needed.
We won’t see Matthews-Marner magic any longer, as the latter was traded to the Vegas Golden Knights during the offseason. Matthews and Marner’s reign may have ended with profound boos from the crowd, but they were a true delight to watch during the regular season, making professional hockey seem like an easy endeavour at their best.
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