Last year the Auston Matthews led the NHL in 5v5 goals with 29.

Auston Matthews scored 40 goals and added 29 assists for a total of 69 points. Matthews scored at a rate of 2.12 points / 60 (5v5) and posted a possession rating of 51.45. It was a rookie season for the ages. Matthews won the Calder Trophy and was easily the Leafs best player.

Now that we are about a third of the way through the new season, I thought it would be interesting to check in on Matthews’ current stats and see how he is doing compared to his rookie season.

By the old eye-test, Matthews seems to look even more dominant than he did in his rookie season. There are times when it looks like he can (or at least should) score at will. He usually does at least one thing that blows you away per game.

The problem is, we assume players will improve in their second season, so as long as they’re playing reasonably well, it would be easy to fall prey to confirmation bias and just make the assumption that he’s getting better.

In order to avoid that, I thought I’d make a statistical comparison and see what’s going on.

Matthews’ Season So Far

One of the most impressive things about Auston Matthews is that he recorded a shot in his first 104 games in the NHL, before losing the streak when he failed to record a shot against the Flames on November 28.

This year has also seen coach Mike Babcock try out more of a variety of wingers with Matthews. The problem is that Matthews is a 53% player with Nylander and 50% with anyone else. He has just one goal in his last eight games – games in which he has barely played with Nylander.

He also missed four game after playing in all 82 last season. Overall, there is the slump, the injury, and the line mixing which is slightly more adversity than he faced last year, but nothing that could really be seen as that big of a deal – I mean, he’s still rocking a point-per-game, and he didn’t achieve that last season.

Stats

Despite the slight bit adversity in some areas, Matthews has actually significantly improved in most areas this season to date.

Last season he was skating about a minute less 5v5 than he is this season, so it seems Babock is giving him more responsibility. He still skates about four minutes less per game than the league’s leading centre, but his ice-time has gone up over last year. This has helped, since his possession rating is up a full percentage point (the range is small, so one percentage point is a significant improvement).

Obviously we can’t compare goal and point totals between 25 and 82 games, so I’ll stick to rate stats. So far this year, Matthews is averaging about an extra shot-and-a-half per 60 minutes, but this has followed with about the same increase in shots against.

His points/60 is up from 2.12 to 2.59. His game-score /60 (a stat that attempts to be a “one number” rating of total game performance) has gone from 2.71 last year, to 3.58 this year (4th in the NHL among players who’ve played over 300 5v5 minutes). That is a significant improvement.

Matthews on-ice (team totals when he is on the ice, as opposed to just his individual totals) expected-goals per/60 is up, his expected goals-against per/60 is down.

The only real thing that is down is his individual goals/60 and that’s only slightly.

Overall, I would say that even though Matthews led the NHL in 5v5 goals (arguably more impressive that winning the scoring title, or the Rocket Richard Trophy) he has actually improved so far in his sophomore season. This despite a recent slump (by his standards), a four game injury and less time with Nylander.

All stats from corsica.hockey and naturalstattrick.com