![\"Auston](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/GettyImages-2260818378-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\nMILAN \u2014 He was 24. He was in the midst of the first 60-goal season in the history of the Toronto Maple Leafs. He was in just his sixth NHL season and his name was already being bandied about as perhaps the greatest American hockey player ever to live. The Athletic named him the 64th-best player in modern NHL history, ahead of the likes of the legendary Denis Savard and 700-goal-scorer Mike Gartner. He was going to break the league\u2019s all-time goals mark by the time he was done. He was inevitable.<\/p>\n
2022 was Auston Matthews\u2019 year. It was going to be Auston Matthews\u2019 Olympics. Beijing was going to be where Matthews put the United States back on top of the podium for the first time in more than four decades, and put himself on top of the world as a player for the ages.<\/p>\n
COVID robbed Matthews of the moment. But something else has robbed him of that mantle.<\/p>\n
When the United States took the ice at Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena on Thursday night, Matthews \u2014 now 28 \u2014 took the ice as an Olympian for the first time. But not as the undisputed best American player in the game. Not as an American icon. Not as America\u2019s great hockey hope.<\/p>\n
Hell, he wasn\u2019t even the first-line center.<\/p>\n
How did that happen? Hard to say, for sure. But Milan presents a fascinating nexus point in Matthews\u2019 career timeline. It could be where we finally decide he really is this new version of himself: frequently phenomenal but flawed. Or it could be where he launches himself back into the sporting stratosphere, triggering a triumphant second act to his already-storied career.<\/p>\n
OK, all that histrionic throat-clearing aside, let\u2019s not be too hyperbolic here (something all of us in hockey seem to do when it comes to anything involving the Toronto Maple Leafs). Matthews is still an outstanding player, capable of scoring in bunches unlike nearly any other player in the league. He\u2019s big, he\u2019s strong, he\u2019s slick. But he\u2019s not the guy who scored 69 goals \u2014 an almost-unfathomable total in the modern-day NHL \u2014 and posted 107 points just two seasons ago. He battled through injury last season and plummeted to just 33 goals in 67 games. This year, he\u2019s on pace for 41, but he\u2019s under a point-per-game rate for the first time since his rookie season back in 2016-17, and he just isn\u2019t the dominating, all-zones presence the hockey world had grown accustomed to. There\u2019s whispers he might be playing through something again, but maybe we\u2019re all just grasping for some kind of explanation for his drop-off.<\/p>\n
Make no mistake, Matthews is still very, very good. He may even be great. But he\u2019s not what he was, and he hasn\u2019t been for a while now.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n Auston Matthews celebrates his goal during Team USA\u2019s Olympic opener against Latvia, which the Americans won 5-1. (RvS.Media \/ Monika Majer \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Not long ago, bars and pubs across North America rang out with the conversation of the moment \u2014\u00a0who was really the best player in the game, and who would you really rather have: Matthews or Connor McDavid? Well, McDavid ran away with that one, reaching two straight Stanley Cup finals and attaining levels of play we\u2019ve rarely, if ever, seen before. Now McDavid is being compared to fellow Canadian Nathan MacKinnon in the World\u2019s Best debate. Matthews isn\u2019t even in the conversation. It\u2019s McDavid, MacKinnon, Kucherov, Draisaitl, Makar, Hughes \u2014 Celebrini, even.<\/p>\n
What happened? Injuries? Sure, they\u2019ve certainly played a role, and that\u2019s not his fault. The aging curve? Well, he\u2019s still a young man at 28, but players do tend to peak in their early-to-mid-20s these days. The tail-off has been perplexing, to say the least.<\/p>\n
Matthews was named captain of Team USA, but is he really this team\u2019s leader, or was it just a way of avoiding controversy? Picking anyone but the 4 Nations Face-Off captain would have turned the selection into a massive story both here and back in Toronto. But it\u2019s a fair question. Matthews doesn\u2019t have the fire of Brady Tkachuk, he\u2019s not as productive as Jack Eichel and he\u2019s not as dominant as Quinn Hughes. He\u2019s quiet and unassuming, which is a necessary defense mechanism under the Toronto microscope. But he\u2019s not the guy who\u2019s going to drag players into the fight. Not these days, at least.<\/p>\n
In Thursday\u2019s opener against Latvia, there were noticeable players all over the ice. Brock Nelson had two goals, another one overturned, and hit a post. The Tkachuk brothers were all around the net and in the corners, with Brady scoring and delivering a couple of big hits and Matthew adding two assists. Even J.T. Miller, one of general manager Bill Guerin\u2019s more suspect selections, set up a Quinn Hughes goal (that was also overturned) and wreaked havoc in front of the net (causing the Nelson goal to be overturned).<\/p>\n
Matthews did score a power-play goal early in the third period with the game well in hand, snapping off a quick wrister in the slot. It was his first best-on-best goal for Team USA, after failing to score in three games at the 4 Nations last year. It was a good sign, and for the Americans\u2019 sake, hopefully a harbinger of things to come \u2014 because he was largely innocuous through the first two periods. His most memorable moment to that point had been when he took an elbow to the face right before Latvia\u2019s first-period equalizer.<\/p>\n
Later in the game, he got shoved off the puck cutting across the slot by an 18-year-old draft-eligible Latvian named Alberts Smits. Two years ago, four years ago, six years ago, Matthews bulldozes that poor kid and doesn\u2019t stop until the puck is in the back of the net. On Thursday, he just skated away empty-handed, no push-back, no fury. A couple of shifts later, Matthews completely flubbed a wide-open one-timer teed up by Hughes. That kind of play happens to just about everybody from time to time. It\u2019s not supposed to happen to Matthews. Not on this stage.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s important to note that this was just Matthews\u2019 fourth game on this kind of stage, counting the 4 Nations. The decision to pull out of the 2022 Olympics will undoubtedly haunt him and others of his generation forever. Every Olympics is a chance to be a hero, a chance to burnish a legacy. And every Olympics missed is a squandered opportunity to become a part of hockey history.<\/p>\n
But again, Matthews is only 28. There\u2019s time to get hot. There\u2019s time to turn these past two seasons into a blip, not a trend, and get back into that conversation.<\/p>\n
But it has to start now. This is the place \u2014 this stage, this team, these Games. The Olympics can turn unknowns into household names, but it also can turn stars into legends. If that third-period power-play goal ends up being the first of many in Milan, if the intensity of these games brings out that bull-in-a-gelato-shop style that made Matthews so indomitable and intimidating for so long, if Matthews regains the swagger that made him special from Day 1 when he scored four goals in his NHL debut, then not only could the United States\u2019 long gold medal drought end, so could all the teeth-gnashing in Toronto and the whispers around the rest of the hockey world.<\/p>\n
Maybe nothing\u2019s wrong with Auston Matthews. Maybe he just needs a big moment to draw out the greatness we know he has in him. But if the Olympics don\u2019t do it, it\u2019s fair to continue wondering: What will?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MILAN \u2014 He was 24. He was in the midst of the first 60-goal season in the history…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5106],"tags":[5,20,5172,54125,4,2602,66,31,5171],"class_list":{"0":"post-456475","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-maple-leafs","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-maple-leafs","10":"tag-mapleleafs","11":"tag-mens-olympic-ice-hockey","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-olympics","14":"tag-toronto","15":"tag-toronto-maple-leafs","16":"tag-torontomapleleafs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116061517728873504","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}