Auston Matthews is having a pretty mediocre year, for someone in the prime of his career who wants to be considered as one of the very best players in the game.
He is currently a whopping 12 goals behind Connor McDavid for the NHL lead.
He is being outscored – still – by a 37-year-old Alex Ovechkin.
He has only 9 even-strength goals on the season, which puts him in a 14-way tie for 38th in the league, tied with players like Golden Knights’ fourth line forward William Carrier.
And on Saturday night, on prime time on national TV and on Hockey Night in Canada, he was made to look a fool by Washington’s beloved fourth line forward Garnet Hathaway, the long-term right winger on the fourth line Maple Leafs’ head coach Sheldon Keefe called “the league’s best” before the puck dropped on the Caps’ 5-2 win over his Leafs.
Yes, Auston Matthews – after scoring a rather lucky goal on what can only be accurately described as a muffin of a shot – whipped out a rather peculiar goal celebration, when you consider the circumstances.
His team was still down by a goal at the time, and we’re still not sure exactly what he was trying to do there with his celebration. It looked like he was motioning to the Capital One Arena crowd to shut up, to stop talking? Which is a little strange, considering the Caps fans in attendance hadn’t been booing him or anything like that — in fact, they really didn’t seem to give two f*cks about him. So maybe it was just a case of Auston Matthews thinking he’s a bigger deal than he actually is? Who knows.
Anyway, we’re sitting there watching this game and we’re like, “What the f*ck? Did he really just do that? What a douche.”
I mean, don’t get me wrong… I love a good celebration (I am an Ovi fan after all), but when the moment calls for it. Like if it’s a game-winning goal or even just a really nice goal, or if it’s your 50th or something (hello “hot stick” celly)… But not when you score on a muffin for your 9th even-strength goal, and your team is still losing the game.
Maybe if you’d ever won so much as even a single playoff series in your career, then sure. You might be able to get away with it.
And the Caps didn’t seem to appreciate the celly either, as they’d come out flying in the 3rd period and blow the game open, starting with just 10 seconds into the period when Garnet Hathaway and the Caps’ fourth line would steal the puck off of Matthews’ line and bully their way into the Leafs’ zone, with Hathaway then ripping the shot past Samsonov at 00:10.
Poetry.
Here’s the full summary of the scoring:
- Caps’ defenseman Erik Gustafsson had himself a night. He’d get his 1st goal of the night in the 1st period, opening the game’s scoring on a jam play at the side of Samsonov’s net. Bad goal by Samsonov (stop me if you’ve heard that one before), 1-0 Caps. Assists to Sonny Milano – who also had himself a night – and John Carlson.
- William Nylander scores on a one-timer from the high slot. 1-1.
- About a minute and a half later, Samsonov would hand the momentum back to the Caps, as he gives up another bad goal, this time to Trevor van Riemsdyk. It was TVR’s 3rd goal in the last 4 games. En fuego. 2-1 Caps, assists to Anthony Mantha and Milano.
- Gustafsson gets another, this time depositing an absolutely disgusting (in a good way) cross-ice pass from Evgeny Kuznetsov. Kuzy fed it on his backhand through about 5 Toronto skaters. Just sick stuff from #92. 3-1 Caps, assists to the aforementioned Kuznetsov, and Milano again.
- The infamous Matthews muffin makes it 3-2, and that’s how the 2nd period would end.
- As mentioned above, the Caps’ fourth line would dummy the Matthews’ line just 10 seconds into the 3rd period. 4-2 Caps on the goal by Garnet Hathaway, assist to Nick Jensen.
- And just a few minutes later, Gustafsson would put the icing on the cake by scoring his hat trick goal on a wicked shot top shelf past Samsonov. 5-2 Caps, assists to Kuznetsov and Aliaksei Protas.
Some additional game notes and observations:
- Hathaway mocking Matthews with his own celebration after the score became 5-2 Caps was definitely one of the funniest things I’ve seen so far this season — definitely going to need someone to make a GIF of that for future games against the Maple Leafs.
- There’s been a lot of hoopla from Leafs fans around Ilya Samsonov so far this season. We’ve repeatedly been told by these Leafs fans that we should regret letting him go. Well, I’m here to tell you that I regret absolutely nothing, as to me, Samsonov looks exactly the same as I remember, flopping around aimlessly, always wildly out of position, giving up 2 bad goals and 5 goals total. Sounds like the same old Samsonov to me.
- Sure, his stats have been good so far, but they’re also very misleading. He’s barely played any games, and the games he has played have mostly been against some of the very worst teams in the league. He’s beaten Ottawa, Philly, San Jose, Anaheim… You get the picture.
- And like he shuts out Anaheim the other night, the lowest scoring team in the entire league — and Leafs fans are acting like he’s the second coming of Patrick Roy. My grandmother could shutout Anaheim, okay? And she’s dead.
- Anyway, Samsonov made a measly 23 saves on 28 shots in this game, good for an .821 save percentage. Oof.
- Meanwhile, Caps’ backup netminder Charlie Lindgren was fantastic yet again, stopping 34 of 36 for a .944 save percentage and picking up his 6th win in his last 7 as starter Darcy Kuemper continues to recover from an upper body injury.
- Last week, Lindgren was awarded the NHL’s ‘1st Star Of The Week’ for going 4-0-0 with a 1.50 goals against average and a .949 save percentage.
- This week – it was just announced – that honour is going to Alex Ovechkin, who finished the week with 3 goals and 5 points in 3 games, including the 800th goal of his NHL career.
The Caps’ next game is Monday night, 7pm EST/4pm PST at Capital One Arena, against Gordie Howe’s Detroit Red Wings.
