Auston Matthews joined a rather exclusive club Saturday when he scored his 60th goal of the season in the Toronto Maple Leafs' 3-0 road win over the Buffalo Sabres.
By reaching the 60-goal mark, Matthews is now officially one of only nine players in NHL history to score 60 goals in multiple seasons. The other eight are all members of the Hockey Hall of Fame: Wayne Gretzky (5), Mike Bossy (5), Mario Lemieux (4), Phil Esposito (4), Brett Hull (3), Pavel Bure (2), Jari Kurri (2), and Steve Yzerman (2). Matthews first reached 60 goals in a season during his 2021-22 Hart Memorial Trophy campaign, when he netted 60 on the dot in 73 games and surpassed the 100-point mark for the only time in his career so far.
Maple Leafs' Auston Matthews continues goal-scoring dominance
In his eight years in the NHL, Matthews has established himself as one of the premier goal-scorers and stars in the NHL. Last season was a bit of a letdown after his first 60-goal season, although Matthews still scored 40 goals (his fifth season doing so) and recorded 45 assists, just one shy of his career-high season total.
Unlike last year, Matthews has been on a roll the entire season in 2023-24. In 72 games, he has scored 60 goals and 95 points, putting him on pace to reach 67 goals and exceed 100 points if he plays the Leafs' remaining nine regular season games. This would be the third time in the last four seasons that Matthews has led the league in goals.
Had 2020-21 been a full, 82-game season, it is possible Matthews would be celebrating his third 60-goal season instead of his second. Matthews scored 41 goals in just 52 games that year, which was a shortened 56-game season due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over an 82-game season, if Matthews managed to play 76 games and score at the pace he was at, he would have just reached 60 goals.
Despite the milestone, Matthews is very unlikely to add a second Hart to his collection. The Colorado Avalanche's Nathan MacKinnon, the league leader in points (127), is the odds-on favorite to win this year's league MVP award. The Tampa Bay Lightning's Nikita Kucherov and Edmonton Oilers star Connor McDavid are also widely considered to have much better chances than Matthews of winning the Hart as well.
While a Hart would be nice, Matthews and the Leafs are certainly aiming for the Stanley Cup. Toronto has not reached the conference finals since 2002, and in the seven postseason trips of Matthews' career, he has only won a single playoff series (a 4-2 win against the Lightning last season). Matthews has scored 22 goals and 44 points in 50 career playoff games.
The Leafs, at 42-22-9 (93 points), are currently hanging on to the third and final playoff spot awarded to the Atlantic Division. While they have not clinched a playoff berth yet, the Leafs have a sizable cushion on the second Wild Card spot; they are 11 points ahead of the Philadelphia Flyers, who have played two more games than Toronto.
Matthews and the Leafs return home Monday for an Atlantic Division game against the Florida Panthers.
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