Underrated is the word I keep circling back to. It’s a strange term for a first overall pick, but it fits here.

Auston Matthews was underrated in the minor hockey system in Arizona because his family wasn’t pouring tens of thousands of dollars into him playing on a top travel team every year. Many people in hockey there didn’t realize he was their best and brightest until right near the very end.

He was underrated with the National Team Development Program because the coaches there didn’t know much about him, so much so that they asked him to tryout on site. (Most elite players are ushered in without such measures.)

He was underrated throughout his draft year because everyone was hyper-focused on where he chose to play (Switzerland) instead of what he did over there (0.67 goals per game, surpassing at 18 years old what three-time 40-goal man Rick Nash produced at age 20 in the league).

And he was underrated when he joined the Maple Leafs this fall because there had never been anyone like him and he wasn’t pegged to be The Next One.

Toronto Maple Leafs forward Auston Matthews scores the winning goal in overtime off the glove of Detroit Red Wings goalie Jared Coreau (31) during the Centennial Classic ice hockey game at BMO Field. The Leafs won 5-4. Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports

What he has done so far for Toronto, however, suggests he might be.

That photo above is Auston Matthews scoring the overtime winner at the Centennial Classic on Sunday. He took the puck after an unexpected bounce off the back boards and, while skating away from the net, and with a defender draped over him, put a lightning-quick chip shot backhand over the glove of Red Wings goaltender Jared Coreau.

He surprised the young goalie. He has been doing the same to everyone around the league of late: defenders who don’t anticipate his sleight of hand, veteran centres who haven’t seen someone manoeuvre the puck the way he does, teammates who aren’t expecting the passes he produces.

He has even surprised the Leafs, to a degree. They knew he was good, but they didn’t anticipate him rocketing to a 40-goal pace. Coach Mike Babcock started the season heavily sheltering Matthews’ all-rookie line, giving both Nazem Kadri and Tyler Bozak the tougher assignments many nights, simply so they could see what he could do. They didn’t want to overburden their top pick, with too much responsibility on a team that finished dead last in 2015-16.

The experiment ended after 25 games. On Sunday, in Game 36 of his career, Matthews was up against Henrik Zetterberg, one of the premier centres in the league and someone who Babcock has been downloading video of into his young protege’s brain, Matrix style.

“Be like Z,” is the coach’s message. Be like Sidney Crosby. Be like Jonathan Toews (who is Matthews’ idol).

Learn what they’re doing defensively. Learn how they anticipate the play and nullify the best players in the game. Because you’re fast enough and strong enough that you can, too.

Matthews’ overtime winner Sunday was his 20th goal of the season. Only Sidney Crosby has more, and the Penguins captain is on a career-high goals per game pace (0.81) in one of the most impressive careers in NHL history.

Matthews has not been playing huge minutes, either. As part of the easing in process, he is skating in 17:46 on average, way below Patrick Kane (22), Connor McDavid (21:09), Anze Kopitar (21), Toews (20:47) and the other elite players in the game.

If you scale everyone’s production to their ice time, Matthews is first in the NHL in goals per 60 minutes (all situations, the last three years) with 1.88. Only Alex Ovechkin (1.84) is close.

Matthews drops to 10th when it comes to points per 60, in part because his linemates (Zach Hyman, William Nylander and Connor Brown) aren’t converting on his passes at the level of most first-liners. Matthews is also one of the best shot-generating rookies ever, sitting second in shots per 60 (to only Ovechkin) and sixth in shot attempts per 60 (behind a handful of all-stars).

“I don’t think I’m surprised anymore,” Hyman said, after Matthews’ heroics won the Leafs yet another game, extending their hot streak to 9-4-4 over their last 17 games.

“He’s got a skill set that allows him to do things that a lot of other people can’t do,” defenceman Morgan Rielly added. “But, on top of that, he’s got a good brain. He works hard. And he’s been playing with good teammates. It’s all kind of unfolding for him in a good way. We have lots of faith that it’s going to roll the way it is.”

It’s so early in Matthews’ career that you don’t want to go completely cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs over what it all means. If you do, you end up in some weird places. You end up making some “what if” statements and comparisons that are truly unbelievable.

But that’s how good he has looked, especially of late, with 14 goals in his last 17 games.

A list of the best goal scoring starts, in the first 36 games of a career, in NHL history. Matthews has done it in the lowest scoring era of anyone listed here.

That said, Matthews isn’t yet a perfect player. He is still learning the defensive side of the game, and there were examples of that in Sunday’s win. In the summer, one of the things that Marc Crawford – Matthews’ coach in Switzerland – talked about was the areas of his game he needs to work on.

There weren’t many.

“At the same age, he’s at a very, very comparable level [to Kopitar],” Crawford said. “The difference is this: Auston has played his entire career, including this year [in Switzerland], with the puck. I’ve never seen a guy that has the puck more than him. He still picks the puck [out of a scrum with his stick] because as a junior kid, as a midget coming up, and all those ages, he could get away with it.”

He added “in that way, he’s like [Pavel] Datsyuk.”

The problem, Crawford explained, is that it wouldn’t always work against better players, like the ones Matthews is now facing in the NHL. He would need to adapt and learn better positioning.

“I would call him on it all the time: ‘You’ve got to make sure you’ve got body position – you’ve got to be like that basketball player,’ ” Crawford said of their conversations. “Pick the puck but do it with great body position. So that, if you miss it, they’re not going to roll off you and get to the net.’ That’s where he has to learn a little bit. I’m very confident he’s got that [ability] in his mindset and his makeup.”

Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Mike Babcock talks to centre Auston Matthews and defenceman Jake Gardiner during practice one day before their game against the Detroit Red Wings in the Centennial Classic hockey game at BMO Field. Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports

Babcock is working on some of those idiosyncrasies of the game with Matthews now. He is trying to teach those finer points, things he didn’t fully learn in Arizona, the NTDP or overseas. That’s partly why Babcock put him on at the end of Sunday’s game, with the Red Wings pressing and down by a goal.

Typically this season, those minutes to close out the game would have went to Kadri and Leo Komarov, the shutdown specialists. This time, they went to Matthews, and it didn’t go as planned. In the game’s dying moments, Matthews cleared the puck off the glass but not out of the zone. A scramble ensued and Detroit scored with one second on the clock.

Babcock, however, hardly sounded upset at the outcome.

“If you’re Naz and you’re Leo and you’re sitting on the bench and the coach is playing those other [young] guys instead of you, at that time, you’re saying ‘What’s he doing?’ ” Babcock said. “I’m giving them the opportunity. [Matthews’ line] got two goals in the third. I’m giving them a chance to shut out the game. But they’re right, too – why don’t I just put the veteran guys out? Because they’ve got to learn. We had an opportunity here in a big game, and we gave them that opportunity.”

Eventually, Matthews will be the right choice in those minutes, every game. That’s when he’ll tick up into the 20-minutes-per-game range. That’s when he’ll be called on to elevate even more, produce more offence and join the NHL’s scoring leaders.

That might be when we stop comparing him to other very good players that were No. 1 picks like Nathan MacKinnon and Taylor Hall and look further up the ladder. That might be when we start to wonder if he is one of the – if not the – best American players ever. That might be when the hockey world fully realizes what it has in this one-of-a-kind teenager from the Southwestern U.S.

It’s something pretty special. So much so that it’s hard to know exactly where this goes.

When Auston Matthews is on the ice, the Leafs generate some of the best results in terms of shots for and against at even strength in the league. These are the top 15 centres in the NHL in this stat.