MILAN — 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’s all-time goals mark by the time he was done. He was inevitable.
2022 was Auston Matthews’ year. It was going to be Auston Matthews’ 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.
COVID robbed Matthews of the moment. But something else has robbed him of that mantle.
When the United States took the ice at Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena on Thursday night, Matthews — now 28 — 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’s great hockey hope.
Hell, he wasn’t even the first-line center.
How did that happen? Hard to say, for sure. But Milan presents a fascinating nexus point in Matthews’ 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.
OK, all that histrionic throat-clearing aside, let’s 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’s big, he’s strong, he’s slick. But he’s not the guy who scored 69 goals — an almost-unfathomable total in the modern-day NHL — 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’s on pace for 41, but he’s under a point-per-game rate for the first time since his rookie season back in 2016-17, and he just isn’t the dominating, all-zones presence the hockey world had grown accustomed to. There’s whispers he might be playing through something again, but maybe we’re all just grasping for some kind of explanation for his drop-off.
Make no mistake, Matthews is still very, very good. He may even be great. But he’s not what he was, and he hasn’t been for a while now.
Auston Matthews celebrates his goal during Team USA’s Olympic opener against Latvia, which the Americans won 5-1. (RvS.Media / Monika Majer / Getty Images)
Not long ago, bars and pubs across North America rang out with the conversation of the moment — who 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’ve rarely, if ever, seen before. Now McDavid is being compared to fellow Canadian Nathan MacKinnon in the World’s Best debate. Matthews isn’t even in the conversation. It’s McDavid, MacKinnon, Kucherov, Draisaitl, Makar, Hughes — Celebrini, even.
What happened? Injuries? Sure, they’ve certainly played a role, and that’s not his fault. The aging curve? Well, he’s 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.
Matthews was named captain of Team USA, but is he really this team’s 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’s a fair question. Matthews doesn’t have the fire of Brady Tkachuk, he’s not as productive as Jack Eichel and he’s not as dominant as Quinn Hughes. He’s quiet and unassuming, which is a necessary defense mechanism under the Toronto microscope. But he’s not the guy who’s going to drag players into the fight. Not these days, at least.
In Thursday’s 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’s 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).
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’ sake, hopefully a harbinger of things to come — 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’s first-period equalizer.
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’t 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’s not supposed to happen to Matthews. Not on this stage.
It’s important to note that this was just Matthews’ 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.
But again, Matthews is only 28. There’s time to get hot. There’s time to turn these past two seasons into a blip, not a trend, and get back into that conversation.
But it has to start now. This is the place — 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’ long gold medal drought end, so could all the teeth-gnashing in Toronto and the whispers around the rest of the hockey world.
Maybe nothing’s 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’t do it, it’s fair to continue wondering: What will?