Sickening stat reveals just how good Auston Matthews truly is.
Auston Matthews has turned goal scoring into an art form, and he's only just getting started.
Toronto Maple Leafs forward Auston Matthews it turns out is pretty good at hockey.
Matthews has established himself as the premiere goal scorer in the National Hockey League in recent years, once again eclipsing the 60 goal plateau in the 2023-24 NHL regular season. But just how good is Matthews when compared to the rest of the players in the NHL, specifically as it pertains to goal scoring?
Well recently a user on social media platform Reddit produced a statistic that showcases just how good Matthews truly is at putting the puck in the back of the net, and the numbers are sickening. The user discovered that, since the 2010 NHL Entry Draft, no player in the league has scored more goals than the Maple Leafs star forward.
That's pretty impressive on its own, but it becomes even more ridiculous when you realize that Matthews wasn't drafted until 6 years later in 2016. Here's how that list breaks down:
Matthews (2016) - 359g in 553gp, 0.65gpg
Skinner (2010) - 357g in 999gp, 0.36gpg
Seguin (2010) - 348g in 964gp, 0.36gpg
Pastrnak (2014) - 346g in 667gp, 0.52gpg
Draisaitl (2014) - 344g in 710gp, 0.48gpg
McDavid (2015) - 332g in 639gp, 0.52gpg
MacKinnon (2013) - 331g in 783gp, 0.42gpg
Kucherov (2011) - 318g in 716gp, 0.44gpg
Scheifele (2011) - 295g in 790gp, 0.37gpg
Zibanejad (2011) - 292g in 840gp, 0.35gpg
Even with the significant head starts they have been given over Matthews, all of the NHL's top stars simply cannot compete when it comes to goal scoring.
In fact the user could have gone back to 2009 for this list if not for the notable exception of just a single player, Matthews' Maple Leafs teammate John Tavares. Tavares' 451 goals put him ahead of Matthews, although he has accomplished that feat in 1100 games, nearly double the number of games that Matthews has appeared in.
Matthews has even outpaced the man that could go down as the greatest goal scorer in NHL history in Washington Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin. Over the course of the last decade, Matthews has scored more even strength goals than Ovechkin, in spite of the fact that Matthews, who wasn't in the NHL 10 years ago, has appeared in 185 fewer games than Ovechkin over that span.
