Only one team wins the Stanley Cup. Playoff rounds are often a complete toss up. And the NHL season is a ridiculous 82 games long. There needs to be something else to care about and that’s where personal milestones come into play. The Leafs might have been out in the first round but you can always look back at 2023-24 and remember that “nice moment” when John Tavares picked up his 1000th point.
While it is still a long until the puck drops on the 2024-25 season, it seemed worthwhile to start compiling the list of the pending “nice moments” that could occur next season.
There are some pretty substantial ones. Auston Matthews in particular could have a very historic season as he could pot his 400th goal, 700th point, and move into 5th on the Leafs’ all-time scoring list. All of this playing in his 600th game. The biggest one that may or may not occur is that Matthews is just 53 goals away from owning the #1 spot on the Leafs all-time goals list.
New Leaf, Oliver Ekman-Larsson is only 19 games away from his 1,000 game played, John Tavares’ could hit 1,100 points, William Nylander could be the third active Leaf in the franchise’s top ten all-time scoring list and Morgan Rielly could climb as high as 9th on the Leafs’ all-time games played list.
There are a lot of nice moments and assuming Calle Jarnkrok’s in the Leafs’ opening night lineup, he’ll kick the milestones off by playing in his 700th NHL regular season game.
Here’s a comprehensive list of what to expect in 2024-25:
| Auston Matthews | 38 games until 600 |
| 51 points from 700 | |
| 65 points from 5th on the all-time Leafs scoring list | |
| 32 goals until 400 | |
| 53 goals from Leafs all-time leading goal scorer | |
| William Nylander | 33 goals from being a top ten goal all-time Leafs goal scorer |
| 72 points from 600 | |
| 36 points from top 10 all-time in Leafs points | |
| Mitch Marner | 24 games from 600 |
| 6 goals from 200 | |
| 61 points from 700 | |
| Morgan Rielly | 9 games from 800 |
| 20 goals from 100 | |
| 28 points from 500 | |
| 57 points from 2nd all-time Leafs points from defenceman | |
| John Tavares | 60 games from 500 as a Leaf |
| 16 goals from 200 as a Leaf | |
| 81 points from 500 as a Leaf | |
| 23 points from top 20 Leafs scorer of all-time | |
| 60 points from 1100 | |
| 44 goals from 500 | |
| Chris Tanev | 8 games from 800 |
| 10 points from 200 | |
| Oliver Ekman-Larsson | 18 games from 1000 |
| 29 points from 500 | |
| Jake McCabe | 23 games from 600 |
| Max Domi | 39 games from 700 |
| 13 assists from 300 | |
| David Kampf | 23 games from 500 |
| 13 assists from 100 | |
| Calle Jarnkrok | 1 game from 700 |
| Ryan Reaves | 23 games from 900 |
| Craig Berube | 19 wins from 300 |
| 57 games from 600 |
Let me know what milestones I have missed or overlooked. I know that Marner’s 500th assist as well as Rielly’s 400th assist are probably significant milestones I neglected to mention based on my own bias towards points and goals as key markets but changed my tune when it came to finding something for David Kampf. For skaters anything before 100 goals or points or 200 games seems premature to call out as a milestone, but I’ll let equipment managers prove me wrong when I see a taped puck celebrating something less than that result.
Finally, Auston Matthews’ next hat trick will be the 14th of his career and that will give him more hat tricks than any American born player in NHL history. It should be noted that “American born” is a convenient way of omitting Brett Hull’s 33 hat tricks from this milestone/footnote/whatever, but you know it’s going to be celebrated and spark the greatest American goal scorer debate.
It goes without saying (but thank you all for mentioning in our comments/replies anyway) that you and likely all of these players/coaches would trade these milestones for a Stanley Cup or maybe even a Conference Finals appearance at this point, but this post would have been a lot shorter if listing the number of times the Leafs have gotten out of the first round.
