Auston Matthews (34) seen here celebrating a goal with goaltender Dennis Hildeby, leads the Maple Leafs in scoring and in ice time among forwards. Fans’ anger over the team’s middling season is now falling to the Leafs’ captain.Gene J. Puskar/The Associated Press
On Tuesday, the Maple Leafs snuck by the Connor-Bedard-less Chicago hockey team, which is what passes for the bare minimum these days.
Per the standings, the club isn’t doing terribly. One great week would theoretically put them near the top of the Atlantic division.
But is anybody in Toronto happy? Absolutely not. If local talk radio was their judge, you’d think the Leafs were refusing to come out of the dressing room most nights.
People are unhappy about a lot of things, but they are mostly unhappy with one – Auston Matthews.
Take a spin around the internet, where the most overheated Leafs discussions happen. Matthews’ name is mud. He has become the embodiment of the team’s malaise.
Objectively, Matthews hasn’t changed that much. He leads the team in goals scored. He puts in more ice time than any other forward. He’s not spotlit on the ice like he was a few years ago, but nobody is on this mess of a roster.
Off the ice, he’s also the same. Like it does to all long-time players, the city has beaten any hint of personality or humour out of him. Even on good nights he sounds bored. It’s not a winning approach, but it wasn’t hurting him a few years ago.
So what is it?
It’s that in Toronto, someone must always be to blame.
Matthews (34) and San Jose Sharks forward Macklin Celebrini (71) skate after the puck during their game last week at Scotiabank Arena. The Sharks won that game 3-2 in overtime.John E. Sokolowski/Reuters
Maybe that’s not true when things are going really well, but when has that ever happened? For 50 years, the mood around the team has steadily been somewhere between hopeful anxiety and crushing disappointment.
Usually, the Leafs’ designated goat is the coach. Toronto bench bosses are not paid so well to win. They’re overcompensated to absorb a whole city’s ambient rage.
Sometimes it’s the GM or the team president getting it in the neck, but those are distant figures. You don’t see them enough to build up a consistent hate buzz.
Once in a while, it’s some poor schmuck who made the wrong mistake at the wrong time and is never allowed to live it down. Nazem Kadri leaps to mind, or Jake Gardiner. The city gets its teeth around this one guy’s ankle and won’t let go until they flee in shame. Then the city wonders why no one who has any choice in the matter wants to play here.
The standout goat of his generation was Mitch Marner. He got stickered with a malcontent label early on and never could manage to peel it off. He was an all-star/Selke-Trophy/Team-Canada-level talent in hockey’s biggest market that just about everyone hated. When you say it like that, it doesn’t make a ton of sense.
Try naming a great Leaf who wasn’t eventually run out of town on a rail. Some outfits eat their young. Toronto isn’t picky. It will chew through anyone.
When Marner went south, he left behind an unfortunate job opening.
The first couple of months of the season have been spent trying to fill it. Would it be Anthony Stolarz’s fault for calling out his teammates? No, he was right.
Would it be John Tavares’ fault for making the unforgivable mistake of re-signing? No, he turned out to be better than expected.
Matthews has seen many great teammates before him catch the ire of the fans when the team falls short. This season, with Mitch Marner having signed in Las Vegas, Matthews is the latest target.Charles LeClaire/Reuters
Would it be William Nylander’s fault? No, he’s too Swedish to care.
Berube’s? Too imperturbable.
Brad Treliving’s? Too affable.
That left Matthews hanging out there. He’d been insufficiently enthusiastic during training camp. Then he had the gall to not double his stats once the regular season started, thereby making up for what had been lost with Marner.
And come to think of it, hadn’t he stolen the ‘C’ from Tavares, who, now that he’s lost the job, we can all agree was the greatest Leafs’ captain since George Armstrong?
Matthews looks slower than he once was. More tired. In other words, weak. Less able to escape.
A burst of great games might have kept him out ahead of the trailing pack, but Matthews hasn’t been able to put that sort of string together. He says he’s healthy, but no one believes him. If he were injured, we’d resent him for shirking work. As it is, we resent him for toughing it out.
Last weekend, there was a tipping point. The Oilers showed up and shellacked the Leafs. Matthews was a non-factor, while Connor McDavid played like his skates hover an inch above the ice.
Afterward, Matthews wouldn’t come out and deliver the same dreary nonsense he recycles after every game, win or lose. Finally, an angle in. A dereliction of duty. Not to mention a sin against the hockey commandments – Thy Captain Shall Always Speak After Being Made to Look Like a Pylon.
From this point on, we’ll be reassessing on a rolling, 48-hour basis. Did the Leafs win? Betcha Matthews wasn’t the cause of that. Did the Leafs lose? Betcha he was.
Once this tailspin starts, there is no pulling out of it. Not in Toronto.
On any other NHL team, attempting to trade Matthews – who, even while diminished, is a top-10 player in the league, under reasonable contract for two years after this one, and who has a full no-trade clause – would be lunacy. To even suggest it in a meeting would be grounds for dismissal.
In Toronto, we all know that it’s coming. Unless this miserable club, which gets a little more miserable with each passing week, somehow mounts the biggest playoff turnaround since the British at Agincourt, this isn’t getting better.
When the Leafs miss the postseason or get crushed in the first round, it won’t be the whole team’s fault. It’s going to be one guy’s fault. It’s going to keep being his fault until he gets the message and leaves.
Once Matthews goes, watch out. Because then it’s someone else’s fault.
That’s just how it works in Toronto, the city that can’t understand why the only consistent thing about its hockey team is how predictably it always ends.