The Next Ones

by Michael Traikos

  “It wasn’t because he couldn’t play Triple-A hockey,” said Brian. “He was playing up an age level. But I wanted the training; I wanted the development. It was at that nine-, ten-, eleven-, twelve-, thirteen-year-old range where I needed development; I needed skill development. To Auston’s credit, he hated it, but he bought into it. Believe me, he was bitching. There was so much skating, so much edge work, so much stickhandling. But he saw the results, because when he would go to Triple-A tournaments, he was like, ‘Wow, it’s easy to go around this guy or do this move.’ So there was, for lack of a better word, affirmation for what he was going through.”

  * * *

  Walk through the front door of the home where Matthews grew up and you’ll notice a sign hanging on the wall: Peace is not about Silence. It’s not a place where there is no trouble or fear. Peace is standing in the middle of that chaos and finding a calmness in your heart.

  Brian Matthews put the sign up when the kids were young. It’s a constant reminder that you cannot always control the outside noise and distractions in life, but what you can control is how you handle them. Stay calm, stay focused and make things happen. “That’s what the great ones do,” said Brian. “The easy times are easy. When you’re scoring a hat trick and the puck just seems to be going in no matter what you do, life’s grand. But when the tough stuff happens, that’s when you can see who you are. That’s why some players are labelled great.”

  * * *

  The US National Team Development Program (NTDP), located in Plymouth, Michigan, has graduated many talented players to the NHL over the years, including first-overall picks Patrick Kane and Erik Johnson, as well as Phil Kessel, James van Riemsdyk and Eichel. It’s a sort of Hogwarts for the country’s top hockey players. Admission is severely limited. There is an under-17 team and an under-18 team. And that’s it.

  Although everyone in Arizona’s tiny hockey community knew Matthews had talent, to the rest of the hockey world he was still a bit of an unknown. “He was a natural athlete who was very good in Arizona,” said Brisson. “Had he grown up in Toronto and been dominant early, there wouldn’t have been a question.”

  When Matthews was really young, he once travelled to Toronto to play in a hockey tournament, where his team faced off against Connor McDavid’s team in the final. “I’ll never forget, Connor came down and in typical Connor fashion he blew by everyone on the ice and scored a highlight reel goal,” said Brian Matthews. “And the parents were like, ‘That’s our kid.’” But the one-man show quickly turned into a duel. “Auston came down and while he didn’t have the same speed, he deked around every one of their guys and scored a highlight reel goal. Our team’s parents turned around and said, ‘Well, that’s our kid.’ And the other parents were kind of like shaking their heads like, ‘Well, okay.’”

  It was like that for most of his career. Some might have heard that there was a player from the desert who was really good at hockey. But no one really believed he was the best. After all, how good do you have to be to play hockey in Arizona?

  Auston Matthews goes for the puck while playing for the Junior Coyotes. Photo courtesy of the Matthews family

  It was only after Matthews scored 55 goals and 100 points in 48 games with the Triple-A Arizona Bobcats—he picked up his one hundredth point on the final shift of his last game—that he was invited to the NTDP tryouts.

  “He flew in to see the program and we had him on the ice with the 1995s,” said Don Granato, who was then the head coach of the NTDP. “On that same team I had [fifth overall pick in 2015] Noah Hanifin and [eighth overall pick in 2015] Zach Werenski and ten first-round picks. But Auston walked in and he was totally different.”

  If Matthews looked out of place, it wasn’t because he couldn’t keep up to the rest of the players. Rather, no one could keep up with him.

  “He’d never had exposure to high-end talent, but his skill level was unreal,” said Granato. “I remember walking up to our scouting co-ordinator after and saying, ‘You do have him signed, don’t you? He doesn’t need a tryout.’”

  Granato may have been impressed, but the players on the ice were in shock. Most of them knew each other, had played against one another in tournaments, and here was this unknown kid from Arizona who schooled them all. “He was a kid that wasn’t a name yet,” said Matthew Tkachuk, now a forward with the Calgary Flames. “He was in Arizona and not many people knew about him. I remember we got to playing and—I might be over-exaggerating but if I am it’s not by much—he had like fifteen goals in the tryout. He really opened the eyes of everybody. He basically showed all the coaches there and all the players that he was the best player and it wasn’t close. It was really cool to see a guy that no one really knew about just come out of nowhere and take over.”

  Soon after Auston’s tryout, Granato picked up the phone and called Brian Matthews. He wanted to report on how Auston had performed, but more importantly he wanted to warn him: “Get ready for your life to be crazy.” In other words, the kid was exceptional. Matthews didn’t just fit in. He blew away the competition. He was the best skater, was the best stickhandler, had the best shot and, according to Granato, had a “purity” about him that seemed destined for stardom. “This is the only conversation I’ve had with a parent like that,” said Granato. “I felt it was necessary to bring to Brian’s attention right away that his life’s going to get pretty crazy. I remember asking, ‘Brian, do you have any idea how good Auston is?’ And he kind of chuckled and said, ‘No, I have no idea. That’s why he’s with you. We don’t know these things.’”

  Matthews began the year on the U-17 team, but he missed three months of the season because of a broken left femur. At that age, the injury should have hurt his development. Instead, he somehow came back even stronger than before and was asked to play up a year, winning his first of two gold medals at the U-18 world championship with a five-goal performance that tied for the most goals on the team. “He was supposed to be out for most of the year and he came back before Christmas,” said Tkachuk, “and he started to score all these goals and quickly became our best player. Just when you think you know a player, he gets that much better.”

  The following season, 2014–15, was even more unreal. Matthews scored 55 goals and 117 points in 60 games. He also won a second gold with the American team at the 2015 U-18 World Championship and captured bronze at the 2016 World Junior Championship while tying for the tournament lead with seven goals. “He has such an enormous appetite for more and more,” said Granato. “The fun thing for me was challenging him. There were times in a game where I’d go down the bench and say to him, ‘Hey, you’ve got to have a better shift.’ Even if he had a great shift he would give you a snarl, like, ‘That wasn’t good enough? Okay, I’ll give you something.’ And he was phenomenal at that. I’d go walk the other way on the bench and say to my assistant, ‘Watch, Auston’s going to score now.’ I probably did that ten times during our U-18 year and within two or three shifts he scored or set up Matthew Tkachuk or Jack Roslovic for a goal.”

  If his in-game performance was something to behold, his practice habits were legendary. First on and last off, but it was more than hard work and maximum effort. Granato often tells stories about how even during scrimmages the rest of the team would stop and watch, simply because you never knew what amazing thing he would do next. “Again, we had Hanifin and Werenski out there and plenty of talent,” said Granato. “But when Auston picked the puck up, kids didn’t know it but they all got up off the bench and leaned forward to see what he would do.”

  * * *

  If Auston Matthews wants to play on the moon or in Uzbekistan it doesn’t matter. He’s a stud player. [Playing in Europe is] not going to change his draft place. — Craig Button, TSN’s director of scouting

  * * *

  Coming out of the NTDP, Matthews had a lot of options. He could play in the Western Hockey League (the Everett Silvertips had his rights) or the NCAA (as many as five different schools had recruited him).
But none of these options were what he really wanted to do, which was to play in the NHL. The problem was he was born two days after the cut-off date for the NHL Entry Draft, which meant unlike McDavid and Eichel, who were born in the same year as Matthews, he had to wait another twelve months to join the league.

  That’s how playing in Switzerland came up. He didn’t necessarily want to be different. But he wanted a challenge.

  “I just saw it as a pretty good opportunity for myself to play against men in a pro league,” said Matthews. “Like I said, it’s a skilled league and it’s fast and I really wanted to challenge myself.” Matthews’s father had actually looked into Europe a couple of years earlier when debating whether the NTDP was right for Auston—again, those crazy Arizonians and their crazy ideas—but was talked out of it.

  There were obvious concerns. The Swiss game was unlike the NHL game. The ice was bigger and the league was less physical. Even top Swiss players, like 2017 first overall pick Nico Hischier, come to North America and play in the CHL before their draft year. “People were telling us what are you doing, you’re sending him to the bigger ice surface in Europe, it’s not going to be good for his development,” said Brisson. “But there are a lot of Europeans who grew up playing on the large surfaces who come here and they don’t do too badly. This kid grew up in North America. One year’s not going to kill him. Besides, the Swiss league is better.”

  It was when Matthews went to the U-18 championship in Lucerne that the idea of playing professionally in Switzerland took shape. After the tournament, in which the US beat Finland for gold and Matthews was named tournament MVP, the Matthews family flew to Zurich where they met with Zurich Lions head coach Marc Crawford. “He wanted Auston—he wanted to develop him. He had seen him play and had a firm understanding of what Auston could do and what he would focus on and how it would go,” said Brian. “[Crawford] wasn’t going to baby him, but push him to be the best player he could be against men in an NHL-type setting. It kind of all fit.”

  Deciding on Switzerland was the easy part. Getting Matthews into a game proved to be the biggest challenge. He was repeatedly denied a work visa. His agents tried everything and explored every avenue. At one point, the team and Brisson looked into whether Matthews would have a better chance at being accepted if he were an employee at Coca-Cola in Switzerland. Nothing worked, until someone with the US Embassy suggested Matthews get his high school diploma, which meant taking a high school equivalency test. “It was not an easy process. There were so many layers,” said Brian. “That was probably the roughest two to three months as a family, because we knew it was the right thing for him, but it was out of our control. As soon as we thought we had it, here would come another hurdle and another hurdle. And it taxed everybody. There were times where all of us were thinking, what’s next? Maybe this is not to be. But we just kept pushing forward.”

  It was worth it. Some might have wondered whether Switzerland was the right place to develop a player who was headed to the NHL, but it provided Matthews with a different experience. “I remember talking to John Tavares and Patrick Kane, who both played there during the lockout, and they said, ‘This is a great league,’” said Brisson. “It’s great for your skills. It’s not easy. You’ve got to skate; you’ve got to have hands or you’re going to be exposed. Don’t take it for granted. You’re playing against pros.”

  Matthews missed the first four games of the season—he was not allowed to play in the league before his eighteenth birthday on September 17—but he made up for lost time. He scored in his first game, with eventual totals of 24 goals and 46 points in 36 games. Despite missing fourteen games due to injury, he finished tenth in scoring. He won the Swiss league’s Rising Star of the Year Award and finished second in MVP voting behind a thirty-one-year-old, Pierre-Marc Bouchard, who had played eleven years and scored 356 points in the NHL. “Most of the other number-one centres can’t match Auston’s size and don’t carry their speed like he does,” said Crawford. “You would be hard-pressed to come to our games and not notice him.”

  The Swiss league, which is played on an Olympic-sized ice surface and features a wide-open, pass-first game more reminiscent of soccer, might not have prepared Matthews for the physicality of the NHL. But playing against established pros who were older and stronger was more of a challenge than playing against his peers in college or major junior. It was the challenge Matthews had been seeking. And it came with the pressures of being a pro—where jobs rather than scholarships are on the line. “It’s a better league than the AHL,” said Crawford, who returned to the NHL as an assistant coach with the Ottawa Senators the year after Auston left. “The Rochester Americans were in the Spengler Cup last year and they just couldn’t compete against the Swiss teams. They didn’t have enough skill.”

  As for Matthews’s draft ranking, playing in Switzerland didn’t hurt him one bit. In fact, playing against men was part of the reason why Matthews was able to seamlessly join Team North America at the World Cup of Hockey before he had even made his NHL debut. “Auston was ready. He was ready for the NHL. Of course he was,” said Brisson. “He would have been in the NHL had he been born two days earlier. That’s why when people ask me if [playing in Europe] is going to be a trend—of course it’s not. You’d have to be a late birthday, and a bigger kid physically, and so talented, or else forget about it. There’s only a handful of players that could ever do this. A McDavid or an Eichel. You have to be special. It’s not for everyone.”

  * * *

  Pain was coming. That was the warning Babcock had issued to fans upon his hire on May 20, 2015. As some had joked at the time, you mean it’s going to get even worse? The Leafs had already been suffering more than any franchise in the NHL before the arrivals of team president Brendan Shanahan, GM Lou Lamoriello and Babcock, having not won a Stanley Cup or even reached the finals since 1967. In a ten-year span from 2005 until 2016, the team had qualified for the playoffs just once. It was not unusual for fans to show up to games with paper bags over their heads or to toss jerseys—or even food—onto the ice.

  And now, in order to get better, the team was going to have to find a new rock bottom.

  In other words, it was time to tank. The Leafs knew that the best way to rebuild a team was with young, talented players. That meant getting a top draft pick. And ultimately, it meant finishing with the worst record.

  Upon Babcock’s arrival, the team traded top scorer Phil Kessel for a package of picks and prospects. As the 2015–16 season wore on, more bodies were pushed to the side as the Leafs parted ways with captain Dion Phaneuf, Shawn Matthias, Daniel Winnik, Roman Polak, Nick Spaling and goalie James Reimer.

  It worked. Toronto won just 29 games—two less than the next-worst teams—and entered the 2016 NHL Draft Lottery with a 20 per cent chance of winning the No. 1 overall pick.

  “It’s just good fortune,” Shanahan told reporters after winning the lottery. “I think it gives our fans hope,” Babcock told the Toronto Sun.

  At that point, no one within the organization had indicated that they were picking Matthews over Finland’s Patrik Laine, a talented winger who was considered the second-best prospect. At the same time, for a franchise that had been searching for a No. 1 centre ever since Mats Sundin’s departure in 2008, Matthews seemed like the obvious choice.

  In the months leading up to the draft, Matthews reaffirmed the scouting reports with his play at the Ice Hockey World Championship in Russia. In a tournament that is mostly made up of NHLers who are out of the playoffs, Matthews and Laine were named to their respective teams as exceptions. And both played exceptionally well.

  Laine won tournament MVP after leading Finland to the championship final. Matthews, meanwhile, had an equally impressive tournament by scoring 6 goals and 9 points in 10 games for an inferior US team that had less at its disposal.

  Veteran forward Nick Foligno compared Matthews to Chicago Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews. Another called him “The Man,” which was sort of ironic consi
dering he was still a teenager and the youngest player on the team. Of course, he didn’t look it.

  “I don’t think you can question anything about Auston Matthews,” said Foligno.

  * * *

  Peter Chiarelli, Team North America’s GM, was skeptical. Actually, doubtful might be a better word. When asked what type of impact he expected Matthews to make at the World Cup of Hockey, where the nineteen-year-old was the second-youngest player in the tournament, he was not optimistic. A year earlier, McDavid had needed the first month of the season to figure out the NHL and feel comfortable as the No. 1 overall pick. So it made sense at the time that Matthews, who had not yet played a game in the NHL, would experience a similar learning curve. “That’s the instinct in my gut,” said Chiarelli. Then again, Chiarelli has learned not to always trust his gut. It’s been wrong before.

  * * *

  He got better every game. We’ve talked about his maturity level, his skill set, the way he plays the game. He’s physical. In baseball, they call it a five-tool player. That’s Auston. — Todd McLellan, Team North America head coach

  * * *

  When Chiarelli and the rest of Team North America’s management team started writing down potential players for the World Cup roster, Matthews’s name was at or near the bottom of the list. After all, the league was full of star players aged twenty-three or younger. Players who, like Canadian-born McDavid and Ekblad or Eichel and Gaudreau of the US, would have been good enough to represent their country had they been given the chance. Matthews wasn’t even playing in the NHL. According Chiarelli, it would be “an uphill battle” for Matthews to make the team.