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Last October their narratives separated, with Guerrero Jr. becoming a talent for the ages, Matthews remains a mystery man.
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Published Mar 29, 2026 • Last updated 1 hour ago • 10 minute read
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The Toronto Blue Jays’ Vladimir Guerrero Jr. wore an Auston Matthews jersey ahead of Game 7 of the ALCS on Oct. 20, 2025. The Jays beat the Seattle Mariners 4-3 and advanced to the World Series for the first time in 32 years. Photo by Toronto Blue Jays /InstagramArticle content
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is just about everything the Maple Leafs wanted Auston Matthews to be.
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They are spectacular once-in-a-lifetime talents — Guerrero hit 48 home runs at the age of 22, Matthews scored 60 goals and won a Hart Trophy at 23, then 69 at 25 — capable of changing teams on their own.
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But last October they separated, with Guerrero Jr. becoming a talent for the ages, the face of baseball in Canada, and maybe the face of baseball for a new generation with his almost breathtaking post-season performance. He hit eight home runs in 18 games, had 14 extra-base hits, was a factor and a leader and party to just about everything the Blue Jays accomplished in their fabulous run last fall.
Guerrero’s fingerprints were everywhere around the Blue Jays’ success, and after a strong World Baseball Classic, the anticipation of what’s next for both Guerrero and the Jays is infectious.
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Matthews is now the mystery man of the Maple Leafs. The 60-goal seasons almost seem like a lifetime ago. He has scored 60, but those have come over the past two seasons. He is the injured captain of a sagging Leafs team with his future in question.
Like Guerrero, he is one of the wealthiest men in his sport. Unlike Guerrero, he doesn’t have a playoff moment to call his own, doesn’t have the reputation of being huge when it matters most.
This is Guerrero’s eighth season with the Jays. This is Matthews’ 10th season with the Leafs. The joy Guerrero brings to the ball park every day spreads as naturally as cream cheese on a bagel. If Matthews brings that kind of love of the game, it is hidden behind the dressing room walls and rarely demonstrated for fans of this city to experience.
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THIS AND THAT
The Blue Jays like to brag about how much they do for their players and how comfortable they make their families in Toronto. It’s a nice sell, of course. The Maple Leafs do precisely the same thing, if not more. While the Jays are applauded for how they do it, the Leafs are accused of having a country club atmosphere for their players, which doesn’t necessarily lead to winning. Semantics. Same ideas, different results … The list of NHL teams with two better forwards than Matthews and William Nylander: Edmonton. Colorado. Tampa Bay. Maybe Dallas. Maybe Vegas. That’s about it. The list of NHL teams with forwards better than this year’s version of Matthews and Nylander: About half the league … What are the odds of Jeff Hoffman giving up a home run in the ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series, and then beginning the new season by giving up a ninth-inning home run to what used to be Oakland? About as long as the odds of general manager Ross Atkins getting 16 seasons as Jays GM? … The New York Rangers, last in the Eastern Conference, will not raise ticket prices next season. The Leafs, two spots ahead of the Rangers, have already raised ticket prices … How much has Mitch Marner made the Vegas Golden Knights better? This will be the first season in Knights history where the franchise loses more games than it wins … Patrick Roy was hired by Lou Lamoriello to coach the New York Islanders, which is nothing new for the legendary GM. Lamoriello has long had a fixation with legends of the great Canadiens teams. He hired Jacques Lemaire to coach in New Jersey and later consult in Toronto, and hired Larry Robinson numerous times with the Devils before hiring Roy last season … Never seen Alejandro Kirk looking as fit as he appears this early season. I asked him how much weight he lost. He said none. He’s doing something workout wise to not look like the everyman catcher which his talents have already proven he is not … Liked the way the Blue Jays honoured their history on opening night, having a player from five different decades — Ernie Whitt, George Bell, Pat Hentgen, Vernon Wells and Jose Bautista — throw out the ceremonial first pitch. Didn’t care much for the fact that Jesus Sanchez is wearing No. 12 for the Jays in this 50th season. Like they couldn’t have found another number for the backup outfielder? I didn’t like John Kordic wearing 27 or Matt Stajan wearing 14 for the Leafs … Kevin Gausman has pitched 739 innings in his time with the Jays. That’s only 2,134 innings fewer than Dave Stieb managed with the Jays. Wonder if the Jays will be able to cajole Stieb, the first great homegrown player in club history, into returning to the fold for some kind of ceremonial moment this summer?
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Defenceman Cale Makar of the Colorado Avalanche. Photo by Justin Berl /Getty ImagesHEAR AND THERE
Cale Makar plays defence for the best team in the NHL, and his Colorado Avalanche happen to be first in the league in wins, goals against and goal differential. Evan Bouchard plays defence for the 17th-best team in the NHL, and his Edmonton Oilers are 29th in goals against, 14th in goal differential. How do you vote for Bouchard to win the Norris Trophy ahead of Makar? Or Zach Werenski in Columbus? Or Quinn Hughes in Minnesota? Or Miro Heiskanen in Dallas? And the Edmonton cheerleaders pushing Bouchard hard for the Norris — he does lead NHL defencemen in scoring — claim if he doesn’t win the award it will be because he plays in the West and the Eastern voters don’t stay up to watch the Oilers. Which, of course, is nonsense. For the record, the last four Norris Trophy winners, Makar twice, Hughes once and Erik Karlsson, all played in the Western Conference … Connor McDavid and Matthews have the same agent and are now in the same McDonald’s television commercials. Makes me wonder — might the training buddies McDavid and Matthews consider teaming up sometime in the future in a LeBron James recruit your friends kind of way. They can both be free agents in 2028 and would be free to go anywhere they want. It’s possible neither McDavid nor Matthews will have a Stanley Cup by then to call their own … No player in the NHL skates less and scores more than Nikita Kucherov. He is magical to watch in an invisible man kind of way and very difficult to explain. In his last 20 games, he has 41 points. In his last 50 games, he has 83 points. He has 45 more points than anyone on his Tampa Bay team … The beauty of the best players in hockey, generationally, is how each player invents his own game. Kucherov plays nothing like McDavid, who plays nothing like Nathan MacKinnon, who plays nothing like Sidney Crosby, who plays nothing like Wayne Gretzky did or Mario Lemieux played. All of them are individual artists. With their own signatures and their own style. It’s no different on defence where Nick Lidstrom was nothing like Bobby Orr or Denis Potvin or Larry Robinson or Brad Park. Almost every player invents his own style and few have been able to copy that … The San Jose Sharks, led by Macklin Celebrini, are no longer the quaint story of this NHL season. As of Saturday afternoon, the Sharks were 12th in the Western Conference with four fewer points than the rather dreary Maple Leafs … Veteran Charlie Coyle has never been much of an NHL scorer. Most points in a season: 60. This year in Columbus, since coach Rick Bowness took over, Coyle has 29 points in 27 games. The Blue Jackets are 19-4-4 since Bowness was brought in to coach.
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From left, Montreal Canadiens players Juraj Slafkovsky, Cole Caufield, Ivan Demidov and Lane Hutson celebrate a goal by Caufield on March 21, 2026. Photo by Graham Hughes /The Canadian PressSCENE AND HEARD
In 2020, the Leafs had a 21-year-old Matthews, a 22-year-old Marner, a 23-year-old Nylander and a 25-year-old Morgan Rielly. The best under-25 player on the Montreal Canadiens at the time was a 24-year-old Max Domi. The Leafs and Habs were miles apart, or so it seemed. Fast forward to 2026 and the Leafs have no 25-and-unders of consequence, while the Habs have Cole Caufield (25), Juraj Slafkovský (22), Lane Hutson (22), Kaiden Guhle (23), Ivan Demidov (20), Jacob Fowler (20) and Michael Hage (19) on the way. Looks like the Leafs will be chasing the Habs for a while … This is Steve Yzerman’s seventh year running the Detroit Red Wings and it’s looking like seven straight seasons without playoff hockey. Which has be debilitating for someone as naturally competitive as Yzerman. This likely will be 10 straight years for the Wings out of the playoffs when it looked rather promising early on. The Wings have won just eight of their past 20 games. They have 18 points in that time, same number as the Leafs have had … The team you don’t want to play in the Stanley Cup playoffs, if somehow they get there: The Ottawa Senators. Broken defence and all. The Sens have lost only four of their past 22 games in regulation time. In their last 20 games they have 13 more points than the Wings … But the Sens do have to up their media meal game, last in the NHL I’m told, according to those who rate such matters of importance… The truth on the acquisition of Fraser Minten. The Bruins got lucky. They had no idea what they were getting from the Leafs. “We weren’t sure if he was going to be on our fourth line or in the AHL,” coach Marco Sturm told me recently. “But he just kept getting better and better. And we kept moving him up the lineup.” Now Minten plays front-line minutes for the Bruins, special teams, and the club adores him. All this in just his first full NHL campaign.
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Lionel Messi of Inter Miami CF. Photo by Chris CarterAND ANOTHER THING
When David Beckham and partners in Miami opened up their chequebook for Lionel Messi, paying him in the neighbourhood of $70 million a year, it was easy to wonder how they were going to make that work financially in a league as small as Major League Soccer. So here we are, three years later and Inter Miami is the defending league champion, and the value of the soccer franchise has grown from $585 million to $1.4 billion while annual revenue has grown to $250 million, which is more than three times what Toronto FC takes in annually … If Jamal Murray and Shai’s cousin, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, had played at the Paris Olympics the way they are playing now in the NBA, Canada would have won a medal in basketball in 2024. Both are having their highest-scoring NBA seasons. Both washed out in Paris, with a clearly hurting Murray averaging just six points a game and Alexander-Walker barely part of the rotation and didn’t make a single bucket in France. Alexander-Walker is now scoring 20 points a game in Atlanta while Murray is averaging more than 25 a night in Denver … Watching up close, I wondered about Team Canada coach Jordi Fernandez. Seeing where these players are now, I wonder even more about the lost opportunity of 2024 … There are so many overpaid players in the NBA it’s hard to figure exactly where Immanuel Quickley fits, but at $32.5 million a year, he’s being sweetly compensated by the Raptors. This was clearly an overpay by Masai Ujiri and Bobby Webster … It’s seven years now since Kawhi Leonard’s won and done season in Toronto. For all the noise that Leonard’s leaving made, and the questions that remain unanswered about his apparent illegal signing with the Clippers, consider this: Los Angeles has not won a playoff round since 2021, and missed the playoffs in 2022. Kawhi is playing the best basketball of his life, but the Clippers might still have to get through play-in games to be any kind of post-season factor. The Raptors have won just one playoff round themselves since winning the NBA title in 2019 but are heading to the post-season (playoffs or play-in games) in the coming weeks … Alek Manoah starts the season on the injured list of the L.A. Angels. Late in spring training, he lost a fingernail, which is the latest stumbling block for the former Blue Jay … That Andre Dawson wants his Baseball Hall of Fame bust to no longer have an Expos logo is a kick in the gut for fans of the Expos. But it’s not a kick in the gut from those who understand how poorly the Expos treated Dawson in his final seasons in Montreal … Happy birthday to Marie-Philip Poulin (35), Earl Campbell (71), Walt Frazier (81), Rick Barry (82), Tom Wilson (32), Keith Tkachuk (54), John Anderson (69), Will Smith (31), Jeff Beukeboom (61), Denny McLain (82) and Lou Franceschetti (68) … And hey, whatever became of Gradey Dick?
ssimmons@postmedia.com
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