Matthews has been in the top 5 of shot blocks by a forward for a few years and was #1 a couple seasons ago. Right now he has 31 blocks, making him 25th in the entire league including defencemen (1-129 are all D men except Matthews). Just thought it was an interesting stat that shines a bit of light on his two-way play.

11 comments

  1. Maybe a bold take but I’d rather have the best goalscorer in the world than the best shot blocking forward in the league, I get the feeling Craig Berube disagrees though

  2. Maybe this is a hot take, but I take from this stat that Matthews spends a lot of time in his own zone without the puck. Not what I want to see, I want to see him leading in shot attempts, shots and fucking goals

  4. I understand that defense is incredibly important and such but like, we cant be having Mathews taking such a large defensive role. We are paying him to score, and hes being used as a penalty killer and semi defensive forward. We need to get him to spend as much time on offense and not defense. The biggest “benefit” of Marner walking was to get some more depth, perhaps on the defensive end so mathews can focus more energy on scoring and not defense. Even Tavares took a fat discount and we still cant find other people to shoulder the defensive responsibilities. Unbealiveble honestly.

  5. Matthews defense has improved greatly, and he is making plays in the d zone

    But the team has a whole is playing worse in d zone

    That Canes game was horrible

  7. This sub is so full of awful takes.

    “I don’t want Matthews to be good defensively. He needs to be explosive on offence.”

    Can’t have shit with Leafs fans

  8. This doesn’t surprise me, from what I recall the draft assessments of Matthews was that he would be more in the mould of Kopitar or Toews – more of a complete 2-way centre than an offensive powerhouse

    I’ve always viewed his big offensive seasons as statistical outliers. He was shooting 17-18% in those seasons which is just not sustainable

  10. blocking shots is great and cool, but isnt that just a red flag about his possession? He should be dominating offensively to the point he doesnt have to block so many.

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