BUFFALO—Mats Sundin strolled the red carpet at the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2014, and he looked relaxed. Asked how he was doing, the retired captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs sighed and smiled. He was so happy, he said, now that the pressure was off. The pressure of playing for Sweden and, most of all, the pressure of playing for the Leafs. Sundin said it was easier to be captain when you’re not from Ontario, but it was a heavy burden, regardless. He just looked so relieved.

On Friday night, one year after they missed Connor McDavid by a ping-pong ball, the Toronto Maple Leafs drafted centre Auston Matthews of Scottsdale, Ariz., No. 1 overall. Toronto had not selected No. 1 overall since Wendel Clark in 1985, but Sundin was one of those. Matthews is expected to be a franchise centre, and those are rare beasts.

“I mean, hockey’s a team game, so there’s really no saviour,” said Matthews. “I want to be an impact player. I believe I can be a franchise centreman, a No. 1 centreman in the NHL, so that’s my ultimate goal.”

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The Brendan Shanahan-led rebuild of this franchise has had many steps: the ejection of the previous regime, man by man; the front-office reconstruction; Mike Babcock, and Lou Lamoriello. There are prospects all through the system now, at varying degrees of development: there is the makings of something.

And now, a crown jewel: a big centre who can handle the puck and eat tough minutes and who excelled against men as an 18-year-old. Auston Matthews, welcome to Toronto.

“My heart was beating when I was walking up there,” said Matthews. “Very nerve-wracking.”

“I remember somebody at the end-of-season press conference last year, after I said we’re going to do this the right way, asking, ‘Well what if you win the draft lottery?’ ” said Leafs president Brendan Shanahan. “Well, then it’s going to speed up. So the answer is it’s still a team game that requires a solid team. Acquiring special players helps.”

Pressure. A No. 1 pick guarantees nothing, of course. Go back to Sundin in 1989, and four No. 1 picks have played central roles in winning Stanley Cups with the team that drafted them: Vincent Lecavalier, Marc-André Fleury and Sidney Crosby on the same team, Patrick Kane. That’s it.

But when you have great players to build around, you have a chance to build something great. With a septuagenarian general manager and a coach who treats losing like he’s biting down on a leather strap — and a goalie, now — the question is, how high, how fast?

“Well, you guys ask me that every three weeks,” said Babcock. “We like to speed it up as fast as we possibly can. Getting good players helps you get better. He’s a kid, though. I don’t know how long it’s going to take. You see lots of kids go lots of places around the league. And to me, if you surround them with some good veterans, you have a chance.”

But the search for 30th is over now. Matthews was the end of that. Now comes what’s next.

What fans said about Leafs' Matthews pick

“You know, that’s really up to them, when we go out on the ice and we start playing,” says Shanahan. “It’s up to how people come together, what kind of an off-season our guys have, and how quickly people gel. While it’s a very compelling and interesting question as to where are we in the upward trajectory, what’s more important to us is, we have an upward trajectory.

“We said it last year: we wanted to become a team that could have success and be sustainable. And where we are in that timeline … we’ll win a few games and people will say we’re ahead, and we’ll lose a few games and people will say we’re not, it doesn’t matter to me as much as whether we’re moving forward, and whether we’re moving towards the ultimate goal, which is to become a championship organization.

“We’re just trying to get better. People need to understand that if we go out and get a player that would fit into that plan, we’re not scrapping the plan, we’re actually following the plan. What we’re doing is chasing the vision. (Drafting Matthews is) incredibly significant. We see it as an important piece, but hockey’s a team game, you need to surround people with other people.

“But tonight we get a very important piece, a centrepiece, to this young core of guys that we’re putting together.”

Auston Matthews may never be the captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs; Morgan Rielly may get there first. But he will feel the pressure Sundin felt, and maybe the adulation, too. He will be an 18-year-old hero in a city starved for a hockey team that doesn’t embarrass it, or break its heart. The task is mammoth, for all of them.

“We appreciate that people like what we’re doing, but we understand how far away we still are,” says Shanahan. “Even though you can say that when you’re building a house that you laid a beautiful foundation, but there’s still no walls, you’re still not living in it. There’s no roaring fire. You haven’t built a great house yet: you’ve maybe done the first steps.”

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The first steps are complete. The climb, wherever it leads, starts now.

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