'He's Playing A Different Game Than Everybody Else': Auston Matthews Hit Another Level of Goal-Scoring with Maple Leafs After 6th Hat Trick This Season

Auston Matthews got on board not once, not twice, but three times on Saturday night.

Yes, the 26-year-old goal-scoring phenom has hat tricks in back-to-back games, scoring his 46th, 47th, and 48th goals of the year against the Anaheim Ducks.

“It surprises me, yeah. I don’t understand it,” Ryan Reaves said on Saturday morning of Matthews’ ability to score goals, not knowing what the generational player would do less than 12 hours later.

“I mean, I can’t even do that in a video game, to be honest with you. It’s tough. He looks like he’s playing a different game than everybody else. Just the way he handles the puck, the way he shoots it, how hard he shoots it, the exact spot he puts it, it’s impressive. It’s fun to watch. I hope to continue watching.”

Matthews scored on the first shot of the game, beating Lukas Dostal after  effortlessly evading a pair of Ducks players.

The Maple Leafs ended up chasing Dostal after scoring four goals on 18 shots in the opening period. Stepping out for the second period was John Gibson, and Matthews, again, wasted no time in finding the back of the net.

As he did to Dostal, Matthews scored on the first shot Gibson faced, putting Toronto up 5-1 over Anaheim.

“It’s insane,” William Nylander marvelled following the game on Saturday. “That’s what he does.”

Not even five minutes later, Matthews, again, doing what he does best. This time, though, the tally made history.

Matthews’ third goal of the game was his sixth hat-trick of the season, putting him in sole possession of first place in the Maple Leafs’ record books for most hat-tricks in a season, passing Darryl Sittler, who had five in the 1980-81 season.

He also ties Mario Lemieux, who scored six hat tricks during each of the 1986-87 and 1995-96 seasons.

“It’s obviously hard to put into words to be in the same sentence as a guy like that,” Matthews said. “Definitely pretty cool.”

But even with all the goals and all the records, Matthews stays fairly even keeled, not getting too caught up in the historic season he’s having. Instead, his teammates get an entertaining front row seat to his monumental year.

“It’s pretty sweet. It’s fun, and guys are looking around like, ‘This is ridiculous what he’s doing,'” Bobby McMann said. “It just seems like every time it’s on his stick it goes in the net and you just realize the touch that the guy has. It’s fun to watch.”

Tyler Bertuzzi, who’s only been Matthews’ teammate for eight months, can’t even put into perspective what the NHL’s leading goalscorer is doing this season.

“The way he scores, whether it’s a shot, one-timer, in front of the net, he can do it all,” he said. “He’s a very big part of this team and it’s good to see him keep scoring and keep getting that confidence.”

Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe has answered countless questions about Matthews’ ability to score. And he was asked again on Saturday about it.

But this time around, Keefe added that Matthews — with his countless goal scoring — is setting a new bar for himself.

“I’ve kind of gone through the phase where you’re in awe of Auston,” Keefe said. “But this is a new standard for himself. To have a hat-trick and then follow it up again — which is as we know not the first time he’s done this — it’s pretty remarkable.

“But he’s scoring in different ways. Tonight he scores on a pass out from below the goal line, [beats the goalie] low blocker, he scores on a one-timer, and then he scores on sort of a redirected puck on the glove side.

“He just scores in different ways which makes him really difficult to defend against, and credit to him for getting to those spaces and being as dynamic as he is.”

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