Maple Leafs captain Auston Matthews is looking forward to moving past questions about former teammate Mitch Marner.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
For most of preseason, Auston Matthews has been fielding Mitch Marner questions. Most of them are invitations to be wistful about an era just ended. That’s what being a Leafs fan is – turning your disappointment and rage into nostalgia.
Matthews can’t bring himself to play along. All it would take is a funny, little story about Marner. Maybe he doesn’t have any funny, little stories. Instead, Matthews prefers a tight smile and a warning.
“You got two more weeks and then we’re done with these questions,” was his most recent shot directly into the bows.
Ten years in, and Matthews still doesn’t get Toronto.
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I think this every time I see one of those hearing-aid ads featuring Darryl Sittler and Lanny McDonald.
What did those two accomplish as Leafs? Nothing.
As players, both men were run out of town. McDonald, angrily and unwillingly. Sittler, willingly, but much angrier. At different times, they both ripped the organization a new one.
How does Toronto feel about them? It loves them. I can’t think of two former Leafs people like more. Because they got Toronto hockey fans.
Former Maple Leafs captain Darryl Sittler left Toronto in the early eighties without being able to bring the Stanley Cup back to the city.The Canadian Press
The average Toronto hockey fan doesn’t need to see you win. Unless he’s about to be fitted for an iron lung, he can only dimly recall a time when the Leafs won anything.
What he needs to see is that this futility hurts you as much as it hurts him. He needs to see you to suffer.
Sittler did this by getting a doctor’s note that said playing for the Leafs was giving him crippling depression. To which any reasonable Leafs fan would say, “You needed a doctor to figure that out?”
Matthews doesn’t suffer. At least not visibly, which is the only spectrum of suffering that matters in sports. He has two speeds – self-satisfied and irritated – and it can be hard to tell them apart.
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Between his skill and all the cover he was given by others on the team, he’s been able to drift between the lines.
Despite being the best player, he’s never caught direct blame for nearly a decade of playoff disasters. Shrapnel, sure. But he’s never stepped on any landmines. It’s always a defenceman’s fault, or a goalie’s fault, or, usually, Marner’s fault. Marner reliably supercharged this narrative by becoming peevish and uncooperative under questioning.
Picking the wrong time to say the wrong thing was Marner’s superpower. Something tells me Matthews is going to miss that more than his tactical nous on the power play.
This year, Matthews will play stripped of his familiar buffers. Marner won’t be there absorbing the on-ice criticism. Brendan Shanahan can’t be blamed for the off-ice direction. Nobody believes that any of this is Brad Treliving’s or Craig Berube’s fault.
Toronto Maple Leafs forward Auston Matthews will be hoping to improve on the career-low 33 goals he scored last season in an injury-hit campaign.Sammy Kogan/The Canadian Press
Who’s going to be the person offering Marner’s unhinged playoff commentary? Nobody. The one thing the Leafs are top drawer at is generating players who never say a single interesting word in public. John Tavares must teach a class.
If you had to pick the person most likely to pop off when it will help the least, it’s probably Matthews. He got so close last year with his “too many passengers” riff, but it was overshadowed by Marner’s exit. I’m sure his teammates appreciated that vote of confidence from a guy that scored one goal in the Florida series. That he got away with it speaks to Matthews’s protected status on the team.
Where’s that protection now? It’s gone. He’s out there all on his lonesome.
Nothing’s going to change in the next few months. The Leafs are a good team. Too good to fail, probably. It’s still them, Florida and who else? Tampa? Come on.
So the Leafs will notch 100 points or thereabouts and Matthews, who says he’s completely healthy, will score 50 or so goals. The only important thing about the regular season is that everyone stay sound of body and Marner not be too good in Las Vegas. If those things happen, there will be peace at the arena until March. Then it gets hard.
Is Matthews ready for what’s coming? He hasn’t said anything that indicates that he is.
This year, he has blanket responsibility for whatever the Leafs do or don’t do.
There’s a world in which that’s a good thing. That freed of Marner’s bad influence, with Tavares officially demoted from superstar to hanger-on, Matthews is able to assume full control for the first time. Now calling the shots, he spends six months whipping the team into fighting trim via good example. By the end of that time, William Nylander has accepted his role as co-pilot, and Matthew Knies is the new Evgeni Malkin.
The better Mitch Marner does in Las Vegas, the more pressure will be heaped on the shoulders of former teammate Auston Matthews.Ian Maule/Getty Images
Then there’s the other world. The world in which it turns out that everything wasn’t Marner’s fault. One in which the team, having been unable to replace his quality, gets a little worse. Not bad enough that it’s a big deal in the regular season, but bad enough that it goes off like a grenade in the playoffs. In this world, the Leafs get jumped in the first round by a Detroit or an Ottawa. And then what?
The Leafs started out with four potential franchise saviours in the hopes that just one of them would become a Sidney Crosby or a Brad Marchand. None of them wanted the job.
Now the sights are set a little lower. Can one of the guys they have left become a Darryl Sittler? Can he seem like he actually cares about what happens out there, beyond his own stats and his next windfall? Can he suffer?
Maybe Auston Matthews is that guy. He’s just been hiding it all this time, waiting for the moment when the stage was clear of riffraff. Now that all eyes are on him and only him, he will emerge. Or maybe that’s another question he doesn’t want to have to answer again.