The evolution of Auston Matthews
How the best goal scorer in the game has evolved into a dominant force all over the ice
Months after being drafted first overall in the 2016 draft, Auston Matthews exploded onto the scene by scoring four goals in his NHL debut against the Ottawa Senators.
He hasn’t looked back since in the goal scoring department, leading the NHL by a wide margin in 5v5 goals per hour.
Matthews also ranks 4th in 5v4 goals per hour since he’s come into the league and second only to David Pastrnak over the past two seasons. If you look at all situations goals per minute, he still leads the league over the past four seasons. Alex Ovechkin and Pastrnak are the only players in the NHL even in the same ballpark. He’s also added a lethal one-timer to his arsenal because apparently he didn’t score enough when he simply had arguably the best wrister in the world.
Matthews scored a career high 47 goals in ‘19-20 and was on pace for his first 50 goal season before the season was shut down. As long as he’s healthy, he’s likely going to be the best goal scorer in the league for years to come considering he just turned 23 years old in September.
Now that the obvious part is out of the way, I want to dig into the rest of Matthews’ game and uncover how he’s become a more complete player. Matthews’ offensive on-ice impact has unsurprisingly always been really strong, but his defensive impacts before the ‘19-20 season were abysmal.
Matthews has always shown flashes of the potential to be a top-tier two way centre in the league, but the results were never there before this past season. He ranks fifth in the NHL in takeaways per hour at 5v5 since entering the league, trailing only Evgeni Malkin, Mitch Marner, Nick Schmaltz and Mark Stone. Yes, apparently Nick Schmaltz is a takeaway machine. I just found out too. Among these players, only Stone has produced elite defensive results. This is to say that while takeaways are definitely a valuable skill to have for a good defensive player, there’s obviously a lot more to it than that. Simply maintaining possession of the puck as much as possible is a very good way to drive defensive results, even though it’s not what you usually think of when you think of defence. Over his short time in the league, Matthews has become much more involved in this aspect and it shows in his transition numbers.
Matthews was always extremely effective with the puck in the offensive zone in terms of both passing and shooting, but while he’s improved in those areas as well, he’s become drastically more involved all over the ice. During his rookie season, Matthews seemed to rely heavily on William Nylander to do the heavy lifting in transition. The problem was that 47% of his 5v5 minutes were spent away from Nylander, with players who aren’t exactly transition specialists themselves. He spent 84% of his minutes with Zach Hyman and when Nylander wasn’t on his wing, Connor Brown was the stand in. Hyman and Brown are good players in their own right, but neither could be confused for an elite transition player.
There was also far too much time spent with the likes of Nikita Zaitsev, Roman Polak and Matt Hunwick, but Matthews has turned into the elite kind of player who can drive play regardless of who he’s on the ice with.
It’s much more common these days to see Matthews carrying the puck into the offensive zone himself and sometimes it leads directly to offence.
The threat of Matthews carrying the puck into the offensive zone creates a gravitational pull toward him and opens up passing lanes that wouldn’t be there otherwise. If you’re the opposition and you see Matthews with the puck inside your blueline, alarm bells start going off because he can beat NHL goaltenders from pretty much anywhere.
The problem is, you have to respect his vision and passing ability too, especially because the Leafs have a lot of talent up front outside of Matthews. If you gravitate toward him and leave a passing option open, he’s probably going to find it.
Simply put, Matthews has become an absolute force with the puck on his stick all over the ice and this has enabled him to dictate play to an elite degree while he’s out there. Matthews’ sudden surge in defensive impact becomes all the more impressive when you take into account that he played 47% of his 5v5 ice time with Tyson Barrie, by far the most time he spent with any defender on the team. Morgan Rielly, who also isn’t exactly known for his defence, saw the second most time with Matthews at 30%.
The change in head coaches also played heavily into the talent the Leafs have up front, with the leafs playing much more high event hockey. This was always the way this team was going to get the best from it’s roster and it showed. The day Bike Mabcock was fired, the Leafs ranked 26th in expected goal differential at 5v5. Despite the talent up front, they ranked 18th in expected goals for per hour and 26th in expected goals against rate. From the time Sheldon Keefe took over to the end of the season in March, the Leafs ranked fourth in expected goal differential. They did this by leaning into their offensive talent, as only the Vegas Golden Knights put up expected goals for at a better rate. Their defence even improved marginally, ranking 15th in the league under Keefe.
The Leafs came to these results by completely altering their system to a much more free-flowing game. The defence were given a lot more rope to be aggressive at both bluelines, which in turn meant the forwards had to be much more aware defensively. Matthews’ ability to anticipate the play often helps him be in the right position. When you combine that with his improved skating ability and takeaway abilities, he won’t often let the opposition play in his end of the ice these days.
The new system doesn’t allow for a player to be disengaged without standing out as a black hole as the amped up aggressiveness on the puck requires a lot of trust in your teammates. The Leafs now move in a much more cohesive unit which forces Matthews to help out down low more often. When he’s fully engaged, you probably aren’t going to be beating him in a puck battle.
The new offensive zone system also results in a lot more sustained pressure. The Leafs now hold onto the puck and look to funnel it to the homeplate area when the passing lanes become open and they shoot from the point much less.
Leaf defencemen now are encouraged to drive the puck down the wall and look for passing lanes in the middle of the ice, rather than throwing it toward the net from the boards along the blueline when they’re pressured. That red dot in the middle is indicative of the fact that Keefe encourages a forward to come up high where there’s space and give the defenceman a short passing option. If the defender has space toward the middle of the ice, the forward will take the space where the defender came from.
Obviously you don’t want Marner taking shots from that spot too consistently, but in this case he’s got pre-shot movement and Hyman providing the screen and the open blade for a tip. When you have playmakers who can find those cross-ice seams from high to low in the zone and Matthews is on the receiving end, things like this tend to happen.
I’m sure there are more details I’m excluding, but the fact that Matthews had a breakout season in terms of defensive impact after a mid-season coaching change is no coincidence. Keefe’s style seems to have unlocked an entire new version of Matthews and I expect that this version is the one we see most often moving forward. Having one of the few most impactful centres in the game while also having John Tavares should work out nicely for the organization.