Auston Matthews had a career-worst season in a system that held him back

When Auston Matthews is at his best, the Toronto Maple Leafs have themselves a genuine unicorn of a player. For a franchise that sorely lacked a number one centre ever since Mats Sundin left, Matthews came in and gave them what they were looking for and then some. He’s hit the 60-goal mark twice, nearly scoring 70 back in 2023-24, and he’s an elite defensive centre who has commanded Selke votes on a number of different occasions in addition to his offensive game. The problem is that Matthews hasn’t been able to come close to his 69-goal production over the last two years, and in year two of the Craig Berube era, Matthews may as well have been prime Jordan Staal. And that’s not an insult to Staal, it’s just not what was expected of one of the highest-paid players in the league.

Matthews’ season ended in mid-March after Radko Gudas took his knee out, and the Leafs’ season took a nosedive from there. With Brad Treliving, who signed Matthews’ latest extension, now out of the picture, the Leafs will face a familiar situation with a new general manager set to enter the picture. Matthews has long insisted that he believes he can win in Toronto and doesn’t want to play anywhere else, but he acknowledges that he doesn’t know what the vision of the new front office and the people that make it up will be.

“Yeah, I mean I can’t predict the future,” Matthews told reporters at the Maple Leafs’ end-of-season availability. “Obviously, there’s steps that kind of have to, you know, take place. They’re going to hire new leadership at management and stuff like that. Um, so, you know, I don’t really know.”

Matthews’ answer here was blown out of proportion by a lot of people, when in reality, it was an honest assessment of the situation. If a new general manager came in here and determined that a full-blown tear down was the only avenue forward, Matthews’ status would probably be up in the air. But, it doesn’t seem like that’s the direction the Leafs want to go in, so there’s no need for meaningless speculation about his future until somebody actually suggests a full tear down.

How the year went

Matthews’ 2025-26 season can be summed up in three words: defensive zone starts.

Unlike the 2024-25 season, when he was seemingly dealing with a lingering injury that required a trip to Germany during the season, Matthews appeared to be at full health entering training camp in 2025-26. He did miss some time for unrelated injuries at certain points, including the MCL tear that ended his season in March, but overall, there was nothing that was actively hampering him all year. Yet, his production was even worse than the year before. He finished the season with 27 goals and 26 assists for 53 points in 60 games, marking the first time in his career he didn’t score 30 goals, so what caused the drop off? The answer is deployment.

This didn’t make the ‘statistical profile’ that you’ll see below because I felt it deserved its own section. Matthews was 217th in the NHL in offensive zone start percentage, starting 58.72% of his shifts in the offensive zone. This may not seem too egregious at first glance, but it’s significantly lower than other players near his talent level offensively. Connor McDavid and Leon Draisitl each started just under 66% of their shifts in the offensive zone, Nikita Kucherov started 75% of his shifts there, and Nathan MacKinnon’s o-zone start % is up at 77%. Taking advantage of Matthews’ defensive strengths is one thing, but Berube was deploying him the way that the Montreal Canadiens deployed Philip Danault against them in the 2021 playoffs. He was being used as a shutdown centre when, at bare minimum, he should have been above 60% in the O-zone and frequently being given opportunities to score goals.

It wasn’t all bad. Matthews did pass Mats Sundin for sole possession of top-goal scorer in Leafs history, so there was a major milestone to celebrate. Leafs fans aren’t happy that their supposed 60-goal centre barely managed 50 points in 2025-26, and rightfully so, but you don’t just forget how to score goals overnight. Matthews was used far too often as a matchup option rather than somebody teams would have to prepare to match up against, and it tanked his offensive production last season.

Statistical Profile

Category	Production	NHL rank
Expected goals for percentage	52.22%	264th out of 652
Goals for percentage	52.15%	246th
Corsi for percentage	49.94%	336th
Expected goals for per 60	2.72	257th
Expected goals against per 60	3.03	575th

All stats on 5-on-5 via Natural Stat Trick, among all players with 400 minutes or greater.

Out of all of these stats, Matthews’ expected goals against per 60 is probably the most surprising considering how often he was deployed in the defensive zone. Then again, it shines a light on how much the Leafs’ system worked against them this season. Playing a dump-and-chase style without the chase and ending up in your own zone for the majority of the game is something that can be masked by strong goaltending, and without Anthony Stolarz and Joseph Woll standing on their heads, the end result is a lot of goals against and a lot of high danger chances against.

Aside from that, everything checks out. Matthews was not creating the chances a player of his caliber should, proven by his expected goals percentage and corsi percentage, and the first step in the upcoming offseason should be to hire a coach that can deploy him properly.

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