Auston Matthews and Brock Boeser share a few similarities. Both are 20 years old, though Boeser will be able to legally drink in his home country seven months sooner than Matthews. Speaking of home country, they share one: the United States of America.
More than that, both Matthews and Boeser score goals at similar rates. So far in their respective careers, Matthews is averaging 0.513 goals per game, while Boeser is at 0.553, though it should be noted that Matthews started his NHL career at a slightly younger age.
Frankly, every time these budding young superstars play each other, it should be a big deal. It should be advertised like a title bout: who is The Next Great American Goalscorer? In this corner: he’s incredibly hot with the incredible shot, the Brockstar! In the other corner, his nose kinda makes him look like one of the aliens from the classic Twilight Zone episode, “The Eye of the Beholder,” Stone Cold Auston Matthews!
I saw the two heavyweights trade blows when I watched this game.
- Okay, technically at 191 lbs, Boeser is more of a cruiserweight, but does anyone really care about any cruiserweight boxer other than Evander Holyfield? It doesn’t carry any rhetorical *ahem* weight.
- Conveniently for the sake of the narrative, Boeser and Matthews were matched up against each other almost all night. The two spent nearly 11 minutes of their 5-on-5 ice time up against each other, with Boeser and his linemates getting the edge in shots on goal, 8-to-5. Boeser, with Thomas Vanek and Sam Gagner, had some tremendous shifts in this game and Boeser won some 1-on-1 battles against Matthews so that Hockey Night in Canada would have something to talk about.
- Chris Tanev is approaching Sami Salo levels of injury luck. On just his fourth shift of the game, a puck ramped up his own stick into his mouth, sending both him and his teeth flailing to the ice. He just returned to the lineup earlier this week after missing seven games with a groin injury. Travis Green reported after the game that Tanev wanted to return to the ice, but they held him out, which is good, because with his luck he probably would have toe-picked, fell into the boards, and ruptured his spleen.
- Michael Del Zotto had two unenviable tasks: pick up some of Tanev’s minutes and pick up some of Tanev’s teeth. He probably did better at the former, playing over 26 minutes and holding his own in puck possession, while throwing a game-high 9 hits. He only found four of Tanev’s teeth.
- Alex Edler played a ton in Tanev’s absence. He finished the game with 29:54 in ice time, 5 shots on goal, 8 hits, and 5 blocked shots. That’s an impressive stat-line, even if he was on the ice for both Leafs’ goals. Considering he was on the ice for nearly half the game, that shouldn’t be too surprising.
- After a goalless first period, Boeser struck early in the second. He picked off a clearing attempt with a deft stick at the Toronto blue line, then Vanek took the puck to the middle of the ice, taking a defender with him. Boeser was ready for the drop pass and, when it came, he rifled the shot short side, then sheathed his stick like a sword to celebrate, which means I probably should have used some sort of blade metaphor instead of the gun metaphor of “rifled” but it’s too late for that now.
- Hockey Night in Canada of course immediately cut to Matthews at the bench, who had literally nothing to do with the goal. Gotta keep that narrative going.
- Jacob Markstrom is good for at least one soft goal against every game. Fortunately, this time the goal was called back on an offside. Morgan Rielly lofted the puck towards the net, then turned back to go off on a line change before the puck even reached Markstrom, who tried to catch it on the backhand and instead knocked it into his own net. Rielly, however, had kicked the puck into the zone offside, so it was like the embarrassment never happened, like a guy who uses a time machine to give his younger self a belt on the morning of the day he got pantsed in front of his childhood crush. Never happened, Chelsea.
- Markstrom was a little manic in net, but apart from that soft non-goal, he did his job. He made one ridiculous (and ridiculously lucky) save on Tyler Bozak late in the second period, blindly stretching his blocker back along the goal line to prevent what looked like a tap-in. In all, he made 34 saves on 36 shots and couldn’t do much about either of the goals.
- I wasn’t a fan of Henrik Sedin’s penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct, but he said after the game, “I didn’t know it was an automatic if you grab the visor.” The NHL rule book doesn’t call it automatic, but Rule 75.2 does say that a minor penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct is assessed to “any player who is guilty of unsportsmanlike conduct including, but not limited to hair-pulling, biting, grabbing hold of a face mask.” All it takes is “grabbing hold” of the visor, not even pulling on it or wrenching it around.
- So, grabbing someone’s visor, however gently, is a penalty. I am suddenly reminded of when Anze Kopitar got his stick stuck under Henrik’s visor in the 2010 playoffs and no penalty was called. Hockey sure is funny sport, full of foibles.
- Mitch Marner had 61 points last season. He has 30 points in 43 games this season, while rarely playing with Auston Matthews and William Nylander. Don Cherry thinks that a team looking to acquire Erik Gudbranson would need to trade a player like Marner. Don Cherry doesn’t know what he’s talking about. If the Leafs ever offered Marner for Gudbranson, Jim Benning should jump all over that deal like Hobbes on Calvin.
- To be fair to Don, he also mentioned Connor Brown, which would be a far less extreme price to pay. Brown did score 20 goals last season and is on pace for the same this season, but has nowhere near the impact of Marner.
- Like Todd Hockney, the reffing was a little suspect. The Canucks can’t complain too much, however, as they got a long 5-on-3 on which they took a 2-0 lead. With the two-man advantage, they added another right-hand shot in Sam Gagner to provide more one-timer options, and it paid off when a centring pass was deflected away from Daniel Sedin in front, but came out to Gagner, who hammered the puck past Frederik Andersen with Ron Hainsey setting an unwitting screen.
- The Leafs responded a couple minutes later when Zach Hyman slyly interfered with Edler, turning a 2-on-2 rush into a 2-on-1. Troy Stecher couldn’t break up Hyman’s pass, so it arrived intact for Matthews to tap into the net.
- A few minutes after, Morgan Rielly sent a long aerial pass to Bozak, who had snuck in behind Stecher in the neutral zone. Bozak neatly knocked the puck down and Edler couldn’t quite get back to cover for his partner, so Bozak got two chances to score, finishing on his own rebound.
- Boeser nearly ended the game in overtime with what he later called the hardest shot of his career. The hard snap shot went off both posts so quickly that the ref thought it hit just one — the back bar inside the net — and called it a goal. Is anyone else suddenly eager to see Boeser in both the accuracy and hardest shot competitions at the NHL All-Star Game?
- I hold this truth to be self-evident: Nic Dowd should not be on the ice for 3-on-3 overtime. Maybe that’s not as profound as “all men are created equal,” but it’s just as true. And yet, there he was, not just on the penalty kill, where it made sense for him to be on the ice, but for the final shift of the extra frame, skating the puck around the perimeter of the offensive zone, with little hope of creating a dangerous scoring chance.
- Dowd played over 18 minutes in this game and actually had three more shifts than Boeser. It wasn’t about using Dowd’s line as a shutdown line either, since Green mostly went power against power, matching up Boeser against Matthews. What’s worse, he was paired with Loui Eriksson, who has gone completely cold after a hot streak earlier in the season. The point of overtime is to score a goal, so as to win the game. The only way the Canucks would have been less likely to score is if Brendan Gaunce was on the ice with Dowd and Eriksson.
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In the Boeser/Matthews bout, I suppose we have to give the decision to Matthews, seeing as both scored a goal, but Matthews scored in the shootout. Matthews got cocky about it too, saying a word that began with “F” to Boeser after he failed to score, but likely wasn’t “fail.” Probably had four letters, though.
