This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Auston Matthews

The 93rd percentile of chances and 78 points in 67 games, in the least productive full season of his prime.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2016-17	TOR	82	40	29	69	+2	14	8	0	8	279	14.3	17:38
2017-18	TOR	62	34	29	63	+25	12	5	0	5	187	18.2	18:08
2018-19	TOR	68	37	36	73	-9	12	12	0	5	251	14.7	18:33
2019-20	TOR	70	47	33	80	+19	8	12	0	5	290	16.2	20:58
2020-21	TOR	52	41	25	66	+21	10	10	0	12	222	18.5	21:33
2021-22	TOR	73	60	46	106	+20	18	16	0	10	348	17.2	20:37
2022-23	TOR	74	40	45	85	+31	20	13	0	8	327	12.2	20:17
2023-24	TOR	81	69	38	107	+31	20	18	0	8	369	18.7	20:58
2024-25	TOR	67	33	45	78	+11	20	10	2	2	261	12.6	20:28
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	629	401	326	727	+151	134	104	2	63	2534	15.8	19:52

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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

33 goals and 45 assists in 67 games — 78 points at 20:28 a night, plus-11, with 10 power-play goals, 2 shorthanded goals and 20 penalty minutes on 261 shots. He missed fifteen games to an upper-body injury.

56.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 93rd percentile — the best figure on the club. His ice went 48-37 against an expectation of 45.19-35.38 — five goals of scoring missing and eight fewer conceded than the chances predicted.

The Finesse Game

261 attempts in 67 games is the highest rate on the roster and the release is the best in hockey — he beats a goaltender from the top of the circle without a screen, which almost nobody can do.

The season before he scored 69 goals. Last year the conversion fell to 12.6 per cent from a median of 26 feet, and 45 assists is a career high in the same breath: he was hurt, he shot from further out, and he passed more.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 215 and he plays a heavier game than the reputation. He protects the puck below the goal line, he takes the punishment in the slot, and he is genuinely difficult to move off a wall.

20 penalty minutes in 67 games. He does not retaliate and he does not agitate, and the defensive detail is the reason he is on the ice a man short — 2 shorthanded goals says how far up the ice that trust goes.

The Intangibles

First overall in 2016, four goals in his first NHL game, 629 games and 401 goals, two Hart Trophies’ worth of Rocket Richards and one Hart of his own.

He is 28 and was named captain in 2024. The club won 108 points and lost a second-round series in seven games after leading it 2-0, and he scored once in thirteen playoff games.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
he lacks itraised, and he does not have it

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
56.1% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 48.0% for his club in the minutes he sat: +8.1, 98th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“He protects the puck below the goal line, he takes the punishment in the slot, and he is genuinely difficult to move off a wall.”
wins-the-walla strength· the corners and below the goal line
“He protects the puck below the goal line, he takes the punishment in the slot, and he is genuinely difficult to move off a wall.”
hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He protects the puck below the goal line, he takes the punishment in the slot, and he is genuinely difficult to move off a wall.”
retaliateshe lacks it· answers the cross-check, and takes the second penalty
“He does not retaliate and he does not agitate, and the defensive detail is the reason he is on the ice a man short — **2 shorthanded goals says how far up the ice that trust goes.**”
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“the defensive detail is the reason he is on the ice a man short — **2 shorthanded goals says how far up the ice that trust goes.**”
leadershipa strength· the room, and who holds it
“He is 28 and was named captain in 2024.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 912 minutes

Expected goals: 56.1%; 94th pct
Shot attempts: 52.8%; 81st pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 48 for, 37 against. Expected: 45.2 and 35.4.

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 637 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.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2024-25 · 67 games

Top speed: 22.5 mph; 62nd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.16 a game
Distance: 3.42 miles a game
Hardest shot: 90.6 mph; 82nd pct

A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 912 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, 2024-25

The club: TOR took 50.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 56.1% — 5.9 above the club he did it on.
The role: Second line, 912 minutes at five-on-five — 47th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Mitchell Marner	58.0%	46.9%	46.2%
Matthew Knies	56.7%	54.3%	46.4%
Oliver Ekman-Larsson	50.7%	59.5%	50.1%

58.0% together, 46.9% for him apart and 46.2% for Marner apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

386 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 34 of them goals. His median goal came from 18 feet. 39% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 15% from beyond forty.