{"id":537754,"date":"2026-04-03T03:08:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T03:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/537754\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T03:08:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T03:08:14","slug":"auston-matthews-role-in-maple-leafs-upcoming-rebuild-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/537754\/","title":{"rendered":"Auston Matthews’ role in Maple Leafs’ upcoming rebuild revealed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Auston Matthews’ role in Maple Leafs’ upcoming rebuild revealed<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Auston Matthews speculation has included a little bit of everything.<\/p>\n

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A nightmare season for the Toronto Maple Leafs<\/a> has put the captain into contract and trade rumors of every shape and size.<\/p>\n

The reality, though? It’s a little simpler.<\/p>\n

The Leafs are going to try and re-tool, rather than rebuild. They want to win games in a major way in 2026-27.<\/p>\n

And as for Matthews — he’ll be at the heart of it.<\/p>\n

NHL insider David Pagnotta spoke with Daily Faceoff about what’s coming next for Matthews, who has two years remaining on his current contract.<\/p>\n

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It sounds like Matthews is going to be trusted to help make some decisions when the offseason arrives.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s a matter of having that discussion with the captain, Auston Matthews, which will happen after the season,” Pagnotta said, via Daily Faceoff<\/a>. “Keith Pelley said he exchanged text messages with Matthews on Tuesday morning, but then later on admitted that he will have a full conversation with the captain, presumably after the season, and that\u2019s going to dictate as well what they\u2019re going to do.”<\/p>\n

That’s one of those big decisions that franchises often have to make with their stars and franchise legends. Do they get to help make personnel decisions?<\/p>\n

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They obviously can’t do everything, but it also probably has value to keep an important part of the operation feel included.<\/p>\n

Keep an eye on what the Maple Leafs do this summer. Matthews might have his hands on what happens.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Macklin Celebrini is breaking Wayne Gretzky’s all-time NHL record<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Auston Matthews’ role in Maple Leafs’ upcoming rebuild revealed originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5106],"tags":[532,4823,5,501,20,5172,4,66,31,5171],"class_list":{"0":"post-537754","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-maple-leafs","8":"tag-auston-matthews","9":"tag-daily-faceoff","10":"tag-hockey","11":"tag-macklin-celebrini","12":"tag-maple-leafs","13":"tag-mapleleafs","14":"tag-nhl","15":"tag-toronto","16":"tag-toronto-maple-leafs","17":"tag-torontomapleleafs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116338577109156370","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537754","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=537754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}