Hey, have you heard about Auston Matthews? Not that you needed another reason to gush over the Maple Leafs’ young superstar, but he reached the 50-goal milestone in his 96th NHL game on Thursday night. It’s the fastest that any player has scored that many goals since Alex Ovechkin.
Auston Matthews becomes fastest NHL player to score 50 goals since Alex Ovechkin
Another reason to be impressed with the Leafs’ star center.
Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images
Matthews, who scored 40 times as a rookie, potted his 10th goal of the 2017-18 season with a penalty shot against the Kings. He had drawn the penalty off an Anze Kopitar slash on a breakaway, then used a nasty deke to put the goaltender on his butt before scoring.
As The Athletic’s James Mirtle pointed out on Twitter, Ovechkin is the only other player since 1994 to score 50-plus goals in his first 96 games. Over the past 30 years, here are the top-10 players in scoring after 96 career NHL games, according to Hockey-Reference’s Play Index:
- Teemu Selanne, 84 goals
- Eric Lindros, 66 goals
- Alex Ovechkin, 62 goals
- Pavel Bure, 59 goals
- Joe Nieuwendyk, 57 goals
- Rob Brown, 55 goals
- Auston Mathews, 50 goals
- Ilya Kovalchuk, 47 goals
- Sidney Crosby, 45 goals
- Brett Hull, Paul Kariya, Corey Millen, Ray Sheppard, 44 goals
So that’s six Hall of Famers, two future Hall of Famers, and four guys whose careers ranged from quite good (Kovalchuk) to flameout (Millen). It’s probably fair to say that Matthews is closer to being a future Hall of Famer than he is to being a future disappointment.
In particular, looking at the top nine guys on the list, it’s a who’s who of elite goal scorers from the past few decades. Other than Brown, who scored 151 goals in his first five seasons, then just 39 goals after that, it’s a group of players with extended success at hockey’s highest level.
Matthews finished 11th in Hart Trophy voting as a rookie, and scoring 40 goals was a big reason for that. As he rounds out his game and plays even more minutes, those numbers could be pushed to even greater heights. It’s hard to imagine Matthews doesn’t win an MVP or two if he’s scoring 50-plus goals on good Maple Leafs teams over the next few seasons. We’ve already seen the limelight swing his way less than 100 games into his career.
Connor McDavid may have laid his claim to follow Crosby as the game’s best all-around player, but it’s Matthews who looks to be following Ovechkin as its premier goal scorer. Watching those two battle for awards in the same way Crosby and Ovechkin did during their best years should be a blast.
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