TORONTO – There’s an interesting dichotomy going on in Toronto with a frenzied Maple Leafs media corps fully agog with excitement over their new generational superstar and the 18-year-old Auston Matthews, who seems to be fully disconnected from the hype and the massive attention coming his way.
Most teenagers would be giddy after making NHL history and scoring four goals in their first NHL game or setting off a league-wide tweet-storm with players all over the league giving him his props for the aforementioned brilliant debut vs. the Senators.
Matthews instead went through the normal routine in Leafs morning skate at the Air Canada Centre ahead of Saturday night’s 90-minute ceremony celebrating the 100-year anniversary of the Maple Leafs. He didn’t take the bait when asked what he’s going to do for an encore tonight in the home opener.
“You just forget about, go on, have fun, play your game and go on to the next one,” said Matthews. “I think [the centennial] will be awesome, and it will be a great crowd. There’s a lot of history here and everything, so I think everybody is going to be into it. It’ll be a great game. The crowd will be buzzing in the home opener for the year.”
On the other side, the Bruins weren’t too wrapped up in the spectacle of Matthews making his home debut in Toronto and were instead focused on the team-wide goal of slowing down a fast, young, skilled Leafs attack with some young D-men in the Boston lineup.
“They play with a lot of skill. They’ve got some talented forwards, so we have to play smart. We can’t play sloppy. We just have to play, and believe, in our system,” said Brad Marchand, who matched up against Matthews at the World Championships last spring after the Bruins were eliminated from playoff contention.
“I’ve played against [Auston Matthews] before, and he’s a great player. There’s no question about that. He’s gonna have a great career, but there are a lot of kids with talent on their team and a lot of kids that can do some damage on that team. So we’ve got to be careful out there.”
Similarly, Claude Julien was making it more about the Bruins slowing down and stopping the Maple Leafs as a team, rather than focusing all attention on the 18-year-old generational player in the Leafs sweater.
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But it also sounds as if Matthews may get an NHL introduction to 6-foot-9 Zdeno Chara by the time that Saturday night’s game has concluded.
“I saw four goals,” said a smiling Julien when asked what he saw of Matthews in preparation for Saturday night’s divisional tilt. “He’s a good player. We’ve seen him here at the World Cup and he’s one of those young players in this league like [Connor McDavid] that are going to be outstanding players. He’s got skills, size…he’s got everything.
“We’re not at a point where we say we’re shadowing a guy like that, but we’ll certainly know when he’s on the ice, and where he is on the ice because he’s got that knack to get himself open.”
The only downside to this Saturday night event being televised by both CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada and NBCSN: Patrice Bergeron is injured and not with the team and won’t get a chance to put his defensive shutdown skills up against a prodigy in Matthews, who has taken the NHL world by storm after a single game.
