Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

34

Auston Matthews

Toronto Maple Leafs Center

Sixty-nine goals on 540 attempts, both the most of anybody in this edition.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2016-17TOR82402969+21480827914.317:38
2017-18TOR62342963+251250518718.218:08
2018-19TOR68373673-912120525114.718:33
2019-20TOR70473380+198120529016.220:58
2020-21TOR52412566+21101001222218.521:33
2021-22TOR736046106+20181601034817.220:37
2022-23TOR74404585+3120130832712.220:17
2023-24TOR816938107+3120180836918.720:58
2024-25 so far
Career562368281649+14011494061227316.219:48

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

81 games, 69 goals and 38 assists for 107 points, 18 on the power play, 20 penalty minutes, 20:58 a night and plus-31, with 8 game-winners. He took 56.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,269 minutes, the 92nd percentile, and his ice went 81-53 against an expectation of 65.12-49.55.

Sixteen goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and three more conceded than they called for. Sixty-nine goals is the most of anybody in this edition by twelve, and the plus-31 is the best figure on the club.

The Finesse Game

540 attempts at a median of 23 feet with 41 per cent of them from inside twenty and 15 per cent from beyond forty, 375 of those on goal, converted at 18.7 per cent against a career 16.19 across 2,273 shots.

368 career goals in 562 games. Five hundred and forty attempts is the most of anybody in this edition; he shoots from the top of the circle and from the paint with the same release, gets it away before a defenceman has closed the lane, and does it from either foot.

The Physical Game

He is 6-3 and 215 and took 20 penalty minutes.

114 career penalty minutes in 562 games is a very low total for a large centre who plays twenty-one minutes a night. He protects the puck with his frame on the cycle and is genuinely difficult to knock off it, and he does not retaliate.

The Intangibles

First overall in 2016 by Toronto, eight seasons, one organisation, and 649 points in 562 games.

A career plus-140 and 94 power-play goals in 562 games. He is 26, he has scored 40 or more in six different seasons, and he has played every one of his NHL games for the club that drafted him first overall.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,269 minutes

Expected goals
56.8%
94th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
54.4%
87th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 81 for, 53 against. Expected: 65.1 and 49.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
99th
Numbers
94th

The two rank him within 5 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.

Both bars are percentiles among the 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 86 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 1269 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2023-24

The club
TOR took 52.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 56.8% — 4.7 above the club he did it on.
The role
Second line, 1,269 minutes at five-on-five — 88th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Mitch Marner56.9%56.6%49.4%
Matthew Knies61.1%53.3%38.9%
Morgan Rielly52.6%59.6%48.6%

56.9% together, 56.6% for him apart and 49.4% for Marner apart. Marner was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Marner than for him.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

540 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 71 of them goals. His median goal came from 22 feet. 41% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 15% from beyond forty.