I know the Maple Leafs needed to resign him, but this cost is utterly insane. The Toronto Maple Leafs have resigned their franchise center Auston Matthews to a record-breaking 4-year, $56M contract that makes Matthews the highest paid player in NHL history.
What a dreadful overpayment.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have decided that they really don’t like to preserve cap space as they’ve juts paid Auston Matthews a historic, record-breaking 4-year, $56M extension on top of his already massive 5-year, $58M deal. And, if you couldn’t tell, I really don’t know why the Maple Leafs did this deal.
Alright, I don’t want this article to sound like I hate Auston Matthews or I believe the Leafs should just let him walk for nothing as that couldn’t be further from the truth. With Ovechkin nearly 40 years old, Auston Matthews has easily surpassed the Great 8 as the most prolific and lethal goal scorer in the NHL today (with Conor McDavid and David Pastrňák giving him a run for his money) and more than deserving of a $11M+/season contract.
The guy is fantastic and has already scored nearly 300 goals (299 to be exact) in a Maple Leafs uniform before turning 26…which sets him on a path for a phenomenal career total of approximately 730 goals if he maintains his 43 goals/season scoring mark for the next ten years of his career. That’s insanely good…but it’s all regular season stats.
Matthews has never faltered in the regular season and is one of the key factors as to why the Maple Leafs were able to turn around their franchise from a steaming pile of horse crap in the mid 2010’s into the perennial superpower in the Atlantic Division we see year after year, yet he’s equally one of the main reasons why the Leafs have FAILED and CRUMBLED in the playoffs since his arrival.
In seven seasons as a Maple Leafs player, his team’s 1st round victory over the TB Lightning in six games was the first time Matthews actually won a playoff series and played 2nd round playoff hockey.
Whether it was the Maple Leafs defeat at the hands of the Washington Capitals in 2016 (lost 4-2), their epic collapses against the Boston Bruins in 2018 (lost 4-3) or in 2019 (lost 4-3), the woeful failure against the Columbus Blue Jackets in the 2020 Qualifying Series (lost 3-2), the all-time hilarious choke against the Montreal Canadiens after going up 3-1 in 2021 (lost 4-3), or just getting beat down by the better team in 2022 versus the Bolts (lost 4-3), Toronto has been a team of chokers and underachievers with Matthews as the captain and face of the franchise.
And even when the Leafs actually made it out of the 1st round for the first time in 19 years, they choked against the Panthers by going down 0-3 (and losing all three games on home ice) before eventually getting smacked out of the playoff 4-1 with Matthew scoring just two points in the entire series. And that’s not an uncommon trend for Matthews’ playoff career.
In the seven playoff appearances Matthews has had with the Leafs, there’s only been two occasions where he scored more than 7 points/series (2022: 9 PTS, 2023: 11 PTS) and he’s only scored 5 goals/series just twice in his playoff run as well (2019: 5, 2023: 5).
I know it’s a little harsh to judge the guy to standards of scoring double-digits points and 5+ goals in a tough, grueling series, but he’s now getting paid a record-breaking $13.25M/season…which is more than anyone else in per season in the history of the NHL.
He’s making more than Nathan MacKinnon ($12.6M/year), who won a Stanley Cup for the Avalanche in 2022, Connor McDavid ($12.5M/year), who’s won 3 Hart trophies and lead the Oilers to the Conference Finals in 2022, Artemi Panarin ($11.6M), Erik Karlsson ($11.5M), who’s won 2 Norris Trophies and is only one of eleven defenseman in NHL history to ever score 100+ points in a season, David Pastrňák ($11M), and Drew Doughty ($11M), who’s won a Norris Trophy and won 2 Stanley Cups for the LA Kings in 2012 and 2014.
If I was in charge of the Maple Leafs, I wouldn’t give Matthews a cent higher than Connor McDavid or Nathan MacKinnon as they’re the gold standards of the NHL and have proven to be lethal and prolific in both the regular season AND the postseason.
But, since I’m not and the Maple Leafs love to waste away cap space for fun, Auston Matthews now has the pressures of being the highest paid player in NHL history on top of the pressure of being a Maple Leaf, the captain of the Maple Leafs, and having failed to do anything in the postseason thus far.
I’m sure this won’t backfire.
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