Thanks to his hat trick in a 4-3 win over the Calgary Flames on Thursday night time, celebrity Toronto Maple Leafs ahead Auston Matthews elevated his league-leading purpose whole to a whopping 37 objectives in simply 42 video games. That not solely provides him a four-goal lead over the No. 2 scorer (Florida’s Sam Reinhart), however he has finished it in two fewer video games. It additionally places him on pace for a purpose whole that the NHL has not seen in over 30 years.
At his present pace Matthews is on observe to attain 72 objectives over an 82-game season. The NHL has not had a 70-goal season since Teemu Selanne and Alexander Mogilny each scored 76 objectives throughout the 1992-93 season. It can also be a mark that has solely been reached 14 instances in league historical past, with virtually all of them occurring between the 1980 and 1993 seasons when goal-scoring in the NHL was at an all-time excessive. Only Phil Esposito’s 76 objectives throughout the 1970-71 season got here outdoors of that window.
Other than Reinhart, no one else in the NHL has even cracked the 30-goal mark this season as of Friday.
Matthews has turn out to be one of many high goal-scorers in the NHL and has scored at the least 40 objectives in 5 of his first seven seasons in the league. The solely two years he failed to succeed in that mark (2017-18 and 2018-19) have been years the place he was restricted to only 62 and 68 video games respectively. In each years he was on pace for properly over 40 objectives had he been wholesome sufficient to play a full season.
It was simply two years in the past that he reached the 60-goal mark, making him considered one of simply 5 gamers to hit that mark since 1995 (Connor McDavid, Alex Ovechkin, Steven Stamkos and David Pastrnak are the others). It additionally set a Maple Leafs franchise single-season report.
Now he’s on observe to steamroll previous that quantity.
He is likely one of the few constant vibrant spots on a Maple Leafs staff that has underwhelmed via the primary half of the season. They are nonetheless occupying a playoff spot, however have simply the sixth-best report in the Eastern Conference and Eleventh-best report in the NHL. Expectations are considerably increased than that for this Toronto staff given its big-money expertise on the high of the roster. Matthews, Mitch Marner, John Tavares and William Nylander all personal contracts that pay them greater than $10 million per season and are below strain to lastly make noise in the playoffs. This core group has managed only a single playoff sequence win in seven years. The playoffs are what Maple Leafs followers care about, and if they do not make a deep run, all the particular person purpose totals are not going to imply something to them.
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