Sometimes in pro sports, hockey especially, a player will seemingly arrive out of nowhere.
Undervalued. Having flown under the radar. Working and waiting. Hoping the right fit will materialize (call it, if you will, the Tage Thompson Effect).
Auston Matthews though? Yeah, he wasn’t that guy.
Still just a teenager when he eschewed traditional thinking and chose to play professionally in Switzerland before his draft year, his game oozed both tremendous talent and unavoidable interest.
Born in California and raised in Arizona (far from the hockey hotbeds of Canada or the Northeastern US) there was a unique energy to everything he did on the ice. He fit the mold of a classical centre to a tee - size, strength, mindful defensive play but was too, a gifted goalscorer, paired with the hands and raw IQ of a skill-first winger forty pounds lighter.
And sure, every young player is looked upon with some doubt but it is almost comical now, in hindsight, just how quickly (and decisively) Matthews put those doubts to rest.
A standout at the 2016 World Cup before he even played an NHL game, the four-goal debut, the continual evolution from potential greatness to an MVP-winner. A two-time goal scoring leader, who has also finished the past two seasons top-15 in Selke voting.
To Sunday, where just seven minutes into Toronto’s game against Seattle, Matthews scored his league-leading 38th goal of the year in just his 44th game.
And as Wednesday’s game against the Jets arrives? Just two points shy of 600 for his career.
Poor Mitch Marner.
It was just ten days ago that he set a Leafs record himself, becoming the fastest player in franchise history to reach the milestone, doing so in 548 games. Matthews, playing in his 526th game tonight, could very well usurp his teammate, as he continues his relentless climb up Toronto’s all-time ladder.
Over their century-plus of existence, the Maple Leafs, as any self-respecting fan will tell you, have been cursed with a sense of being, for lack of a more succinct phrase, never quite enough.
Consider this: no player, in the team’s history, has ever reached a thousand-career points in the blue-and-white. It is an individual milestone, you’d think, would be a given for a team that has been around, in some form and under various names, since 1917.
Mats Sundin (987) and Darryl Sittler (916), Toronto’s one-two all-time points leaders, came the closet. Sittler though, for all his greatness, was beset (and openly held back) by the infamous chaos that defined Harold Ballard’s tenure as Leafs owner. Traded to Philadelphia in 1982, he ended his career with the Red Wings in 1985.
Sundin, on the other hand, was the lynchpin on successful Leaf teams during the 2000s but he played his most statistically accomplished season in Quebec: with 114 points in 1992/1993 (only once did he surpass 90 points with the Leafs).
He ended his career with a mostly forgettable half-season in Vancouver.
It is then what makes the success of Matthews (and Marner too) so exciting. Sure, you could look at the Leafs in this present moment (just ahead of Detroit in the Atlantic Division standings) and have every right to be hoping for more (a reliance on their stars, once again, an expected if not entirely avoidable outcome), especially as, at the end of the day, a decades-in-the-making Stanley Cup win remains the only true goal.
But there is everything, in the grander scheme of things, that they represent.
Matthews, having seemingly, hopefully, made his troubling off-ice behaviour a thing of the past, seems driven to win a third Rocket Richard as he barrels towards, health-permitting, another 60-goal season. Should he stay on pace and potentially surpass 60, he could find himself behind only Sittler and Sundin as the franchise’s all-time goal-scoring leader.
Marner entered the season already tenth all-time in Leafs franchise scoring. As of this writing? He’s risen to seventh. With another 35 points all but guaranteed, he should soon supplant Ron Ellis as sixth all-time.
Brilliance is fleeting. But for the Leafs, it has too-often been exceedingly rare. Cynicism has become something of an art form in Toronto sports - but it shouldn’t take away from the joy of seeing history be made, either.
So as Matthews stares it down tonight? Enjoy it, Leafs fans.
At least for a little while.