When the puck drops for another NHL season this fall, it will be three seasons since Toronto Maple Leafs captain Auston Matthews had the league’s attention captivated by his quest to reach the 70-goal mark, a plateau the league has not seen surpassed since Teemu Selanne and Alexander Mogilny each reached 76 goals in the 1992-93 season. Matthews’ 69-goal campaign in 2023-24 remains the most goals scored in a single season by anyone in three decades, matching the mark Mario Lemieux set in 1995-96.
Matthews was, and maybe still is by some, considered the only current NHL player with a remote shot at the league’s all-time goal record, which Alexander Ovechkin claimed for himself during the 2024-25 season.
Since that remarkable 2023-24 campaign, there have been difficult challenges for both Matthews individually and the Maple Leafs as a whole. Matthews has battled adversity over the past two seasons, appearing in just 127 of a possible 164 games. A lingering, undisclosed upper-body injury cost him 15 games in 2024-25, nine in November, six more spanning late December into early January, before a far more serious setback wiped out the back half of his 2025-26 season: a Grade 3 MCL tear and quad contusion suffered on a knee-on-knee hit from Anaheim’s Radko Gudas on March 12, requiring surgery a week later that ended his year.
The Maple Leafs’ 2025 playoff run, after finally getting past the first round with a six-game win over Ottawa, ended in Game 7 at the hands of the eventual Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers. A tumultuous offseason followed, headlined by Mitch Marner’s sign-and-trade departure to the Vegas Golden Knights. The downward spiral continued into 2025-26.
Toronto finished the year 32-36-14, a franchise-record 30-point decline from the season before, and finished last in the Atlantic Division after entering the year with the league’s longest active playoff streak. William Nylander was the rare bright spot, leading the team in scoring, but little else about the season went to plan.
Matthews’ own uncertainty compounded matters. In his exit interview, he admitted he “can’t predict the future,”. “There are steps that have to take place,” Matthews said.
“They have to hire new leadership and management. I don’t know what’s going to happen.” That uncertainty spilled into the rumor mill for much of the spring, with Matthews appearing on multiple trade-block lists before the situation stabilized over the summer.
Now, though, the conversation in Toronto has shifted. General manager Brad Treliving was fired March 30 and replaced by John Chayka on May 3, with franchise icon Mats Sundin brought in as senior executive advisor the same day. Coach Craig Berube was let go in mid-May, with Chayka citing the need for an “organizational shift.” The Leafs missed the playoffs for the first time since Matthews was drafted in 2016, a nine-year streak snapped in one difficult season, but the rebuild that followed has moved quickly, and for a fan base bracing for a teardown, the results have been unexpectedly encouraging.
Chayka’s replacement for Berube wasn’t a stranger to the captain. Jim Hiller, who spent four seasons as a Leafs assistant from 2015-19 before three years as the Los Angeles Kings’ head coach, had reportedly kept in touch with Matthews over the years, including regular lunches in Arizona. “What separated Jim was that the players who had been around him really valued who he is as a person,” Chayka said upon introducing Hiller.
It’s a small detail, but a telling one, Toronto didn’t just hire a new voice behind the bench, it hired one Matthews already trusted.
That relationship factored into how speculation about Matthews’ future was resolved. Chayka met with his captain personally over the summer and came away encouraged. “What I saw was a happy captain,” Chayka said, “who’s got a lot of pride in being the captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs, someone who wants to win in Toronto, which aligns with how we’re thinking about it.” The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun has since reported that all signs point to Matthews staying for 2026-27, though a long-term commitment beyond the two years left on his contract remains unresolved.
Matthews has already been active in shaping the roster around him, reportedly asking Chayka to add mobile, puck-moving defensemen, the kind of specific, forward-looking request that doesn’t come from someone with one foot out the door.
The clearest sign of the Leafs’ new direction, and Matthews’ clearest reason for optimism, arrived at the draft. Toronto held the No. 1 overall pick, the same event, the same slot, that made Matthews the top selection a decade earlier, and used it on Gavin McKenna, the consensus top prospect in his class after a freshman season at Penn State (15 goals, 31 assists in 36 games).
Chayka didn’t hide his excitement. “Gavin is an exceptional young man with tremendous talent and character,” Chayka said. “Throughout this process, we had the opportunity to get to know him and his family, and each interaction strengthened our belief in him as both a player and a person.”
The symmetry wasn’t lost on Matthews, either. He sent McKenna a video message on draft night and followed it with a text: “Congrats, looking forward to snapping it around with me,” McKenna relayed to NHL.com. McKenna has said he’s already leaned on Matthews this summer for advice on handling the pressure of playing in hockey’s most scrutinized market, and the early expectation is that he’ll get run in the top six and on Toronto’s top power play alongside Matthews, Nylander and John Tavares, with a shot at climbing to the first line depending on how camp goes.
McKenna’s own ambitions aren’t modest. “For sure, make the playoffs. Hopefully go on a run there with the team that we got,” McKenna said at the NHLPA Rookie Showcase.
“And of course you want to win a Calder Trophy in your rookie season. I think if that happens, that’s a pretty good year.”
McKenna isn’t the only reinforcement. Chayka’s aggressive offseason also brought in two-time Stanley Cup-winning goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky and power-play quarterback Darren Raddysh, additions that signal a front office trying to win now around its captain rather than tear things down further.
Matthews, for his part, appears to be on track physically. He was seen golfing with former teammate Joe Thornton in June, and more recently was spotted back on the ice, taking shots alongside Thornton at the HC Davos training facility in Switzerland, an encouraging, if informal, sign that his surgically repaired knee is holding up as training camp approaches.
Heading into his age-29 season, Matthews finds himself at an inflection point that has little to do with his own talent and everything to do with the infrastructure now surrounding him. The goal-scoring pedigree was never in question; even in an injury-shortened, down year, he still posted 53 points in 60 games, still captained Team USA to Olympic gold in February, and still sits as one of the handful of players in the league capable of carrying a franchise.
What’s changed since last spring’s uncertainty is the organization around him: a new GM who sought him out personally, a coach he already trusted before he was hired, and a generational running mate who was drafted into the same slot Matthews once was. If health cooperates, Matthews will look to put a retooled Toronto team on his back and return the Maple Leafs to the level expected of a franchise built around one of the league’s most dangerous goal-scorers.
Photo Credit: Bob Frid-Imagn Images