Toronto captain has been held without goal in tied series against Panthers
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TORONTO — The numbers indicate that Auston Matthews is due.
The Toronto Maple Leafs captain has not scored a goal in nine Stanley Cup Playoff games against the Florida Panthers. In fact, he has a total of three goals in his past 18 postseason games.
Still, the Maple Leafs find themselves in the best-of-7 Eastern Conference Second Round, tied 2-2 with the defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers entering a crucial Game 5 at Scotiabank Arena on Wednesday (7 p.m. ET; CBC, SN, TVAS, ESPN).
“Everyone wants to produce, wants to score goals, and he hasn’t let it get him down at all,” linemate Mitch Marner said of Matthews after practice Tuesday. “His mood, his demeanor in the locker room has been unbelievable.
“Stay patient. This is a hard team to score against. They’ve done it all year.”
The Panthers were seventh in goals against this season, allowing an average of 2.72 per game. Entering Tuesday, they were third in the playoffs at 2.78 per game.
And Matthews isn’t alone when it comes to having trouble scoring against Florida; in the first round, Tampa Bay Lightning forward Nikita Kucherov, who led the NHL in the regular season with 121 points (37 goals, 84 assists), was held to four assists in the five-game series. In the Stanley Cup Final last season, Edmonton Oilers superstar forward Leon Draisaitl did not score a goal in seven games.
Other than William Nylander, who has three goals against the Panthers, no one on the Maple Leafs has scored more than two in this series.
But it’s been especially difficult for Matthews, who was held to two assists in five games when Toronto played Florida in the second round in 2023. He has three assists through four games in this series, this from a player who has scored at least 40 goals in six of his nine NHL seasons, including a career-high 69 last season.
In the long history of the Maple Leafs, he’s second all-time with 401 regular-season goals (19 behind Mats Sundin), and is tied for fifth in the postseason with 25.
But he only has two in these playoffs, each coming against the Ottawa Senators in a six-game first-round series. He scored an NHL career-low 33 goals in the regular season, missing 15 games. The first nine were because of an upper-body injury in November, then six more after re-aggravating the injury Dec. 20.
During that first absence, he flew to a clinic in Germany to confer with Dr. Hans-Wilhelm Muller-Wohlfahrt, who in the past couple of years treated San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffery for his then-Achilles injury.
But Toronto coach Craig Berube, instead of harping on Matthews’ lack of scoring, has repeatedly pointed out the forward has been effective in areas of the game not involving goals.
“Again, it’s not all about goal-scoring for me, it’s about the 200-foot game, doing all the little things that need to be done,” he said Tuesday, 24 hours after praising Matthews for his defensive play and success in the face-off circle (he won 10 of 16 in Game 4; 62.5 percent).
To Berube’s point: Matthews has won 57.4 percent of his face-offs this postseason. He’s tied for second on the Maple Leafs at plus-3, two behind defenseman Chris Tanev. He’s tied with Marner for blocked shots among Toronto forwards with 13. He leads the team with 35 shots on goal.
Unfortunately for the Maple Leafs, only two have gone in, even though he’s chipped in with eight assists and 10 points.
Yes, he’s been forced to play against the Panthers’ Aleksander Barkov and Sam Reinhart, two finalists for the Selke Trophy as the top defensive forward in the League. But every top player sees the game’s premier shutdown opponents in the playoffs.
Through four games of this series, three have been decided by one goal, the other by two. The difference between victory and defeat often comes with one flick of the wrists.
Matthews had several of those opportunities in overtime against Canada while serving as United States captain in the title game of the 4 Nations Face-Off in February. On each occasion, he was stopped by goalie Jordan Binnington, setting the stage for Connor McDavid’s ensuing tournament winner in Canada’s dramatic 3-2 victory.
Now he has another chance.
“The chances have been there,” he said. “I think I’ve got to do a better job bearing down on them.”
