TORONTO — The Maple Leafs beat the Nashville Predators 5-4 in overtime on Tuesday at Scotiabank Arena. The team travelled to Las Vegas on Wednesday (no media availability).
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Auston Matthews produced four points, including the overtime winner, as the Leafs stormed back to beat the Nashville Predators on Tuesday night.
“There were lots of players that played really well, but I really felt something special from Auston,” said head coach Jim Hiller. “If you go back and watch that game, just go shift by shift, you’ll see all the great things that have been said about him [during his career]. Really, they’re all there in that game.”
In the lead up to the game, Hiller and Leafs players had lavished praise on the 29-year-old captain for how he’s been setting the tone behind the scenes. On Tuesday night, Matthews showed off his leadership abilities on the ice.
With Toronto trailing Nashville by two in the second period, the 6-foot-3, 214-pound centre made a nice shot pass off the pads of Juuse Saros on the power play to create a goal by William Nylander.
After Steven Stamkos restored the Predators lead to two, Matthews set up rookie Gavin McKenna for his first goal in the NHL. In the third period, Matthews made a nice feed to Jack Roslovic who scored the tying goal.
“Tremendous,” said Roslovic of the performance by Matthews. “He [dragged] the team with him. There were a couple shifts where there were two, three guys draped over him and he still made plays.”
Matthews almost had another primary assist in the third period, but an offside review wiped out what would have been a second Nylander goal.
Finally, after a chaotic overtime period, Matthews scored the winning goal to ensure the Leafs evened their record at 2-2-0 before heading out on a challenging road trip, which includes stops in Vegas, Colorado and Utah.
Matthews had been solid, but unspectacular in starting the season with one goal in three games. There’s no doubt the Arizona native hit a new level on Tuesday.
“It was just a little bit different,” Hiller said. “From just a pure hockey perspective, to appreciate his game, it was really a special night for him. Never mind that he scored the overtime winner. I’m not talking about that. Just his game, start to finish.”
Asked about his own personal performance, Matthews spoke about the team.
“We were just working,” he said after logging more than 25 minutes of ice time. “I don’t think it was anything too fancy. I mean, other than the power-play goal, you know, just work, just winning battles, finding open guys and, you know, them making plays as well. I thought the second half of the game, we really just simplified our game and just decided not to lose battles and to be first on pucks and just out-compete the other team.”
Matthews won seemingly every battle he was engaged in down the stretch.
Coming off the two lowest-scoring seasons of his career, Matthews looked more like the player who lifted the Hart Trophy in 2022.
“He was humming, all over the puck, you know, winning battles, and creating a lot of offence,” Nylander said. “He was cooking.”
It was the first four-point night for Matthews since lighting up the Winnipeg Jets on New Year’s Day. That was his only four-point night last season. He didn’t have any four-point nights during the entire 2024-25 season.
But for Hiller, the points were secondary to how Matthews looked. He appeared to be a man on a mission.
“It was his will to win,” Hiller said in trying to explain exactly what made the performance special. “That was probably the biggest [thing]. He won battles in the D-zone. He played well all over the ice. I thought his will to win was pretty strong.”
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Off the ice, Matthews is doing his part to help McKenna deal with the ups and downs that come with being a first-overall pick in the centre of the hockey universe.
“I mean, it’s a lot of new,” said Matthews, who was the top pick in 2016. “I think you’re constantly kind of navigating [it]. But, at the same time, he has such an elite mindset and skillset, and a good head on his shoulders. I think all the guys on the team really enjoy being around him. I think he’s made himself extremely comfortable in the room with everybody, top to bottom.”
McKenna had hoped to hit the scoresheet before his parents headed home to Whitehorse following Saturday’s game, but it did not happen. After bidding farewell to his family, the 18-year-old spent Sunday night at Matthews’ house.
“We had a little sleepover,” McKenna revealed with a big smile. “So, might have to do that, have a weekly sleepover now.”
What’s a sleepover with Matthews like?
“It’s a good time,” McKenna said. “Just hung out, had a couple sandwiches, watched some football, and went to bed.”
Before Tuesday’s game, 2008 first-overall pick Stamkos predicted McKenna would have success in Toronto in part because he’s being supported by Matthews and John Tavares, who was the first-overall pick in 2009.
McKenna is living with Tavares this season and it was a goal by the 36-year-old centre that started the Leafs comeback and provided McKenna with his first assist.
“I’ve learned a lot from him, so for my first point to be from him is pretty special,” said McKenna.
“I’ve learned so much from those two. They’ve been very special to me, and they’ve helped me a lot. And I think just being around those guys, learning from them, seeing how they carry themselves every single day on and off the ice, [I’ve] just implemented it to me in a way. And when you can learn from those guys, it’s pretty lucky.”
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McKenna admitted that getting on the board on Tuesday was “a big monkey off the back.”
What did it feel like when the puck went in?
“That’s one I’ll remember forever,” he said “Great play by Auston. Yeah, I didn’t even realize it went in. The goalie kind of blocked it a little bit, but then when I saw the puck land, no better feeling than that.”
Has he felt anything like that before in his life? “No,” McKenna told TSN. “I would say being drafted, but I think that one feels a little bit better.”
The Leafs believe the 164-pound winger will be feeling even lighter when the team starts a road trip in Vegas on Thursday night.
“I think you’re going to see him go on a bit of a tear now because that kind of weight flipped off your shoulders and you can kind of just go play,” Matthews said.
It wasn’t just that McKenna scored, but how he scored that resonated with his coach and teammates.
“That goal was a goal scorer’s goal,” Hiller noted. “We know he’s a playmaker. By trade, he’s a playmaker, but that was a goal scorer’s goal. Got his feet around it on the strong side, and he had some zip on it.”
“It was a bullet top shelf,” said Nylander, who leads the team with three goals this season. “So, I’d be very happy for that one too.”
McKenna’s breakthrough moment also came at a time when the team needed a boost.
“It was a big goal in the hockey game,” Hiller highlighted. “That’s the one you remember. It was really important. It wasn’t the first goal of the game. It was an important moment, and he came up big in an important moment. I like that.”
Before the game, McKenna smiled while saying that seeing all the attention his slow start was getting represented his welcome-to-the-NHL moment.
Tuesday’s goal served as an encouraging sign that the teenager is built to handle the heat in Toronto.
“I’ve kind of dealt with it throughout the years,” he said. “But, yeah, coming here, it’s a little bit more. But I think [it’s] just doing your best to try to block it out. And, at the end of the day, you know it’s a privilege to have those people always watching you and wanting to see you succeed. So, yeah, try not to look into it too much. At the end of the day, it’s a pretty special thing.”
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After preaching patience early in the season, Hiller finally put his lines in a blender during Tuesday’s game. A couple notable adjustments saw Nylander bumped up to take shifts with Matthews on the top line and McKenna shifting down to take shifts on the third line beside Nick Paul.
“It turned out well,” Hiller said. “We’ll have to decide if we start the next game like that.”
With eight new forwards being integrated during a shortened training camp, Hiller had been trying to give the groups time to build chemistry. But after the team managed to score just six goals in three games, questions about potential changes kept popping up in every media availability. “You guys had been asking,” Hiller said. “We’d been thinking about it. We’d had many conversations, so it wasn’t necessarily something that was a spur-of-the-moment thing. We kind of knew that if we did something, it might look something like what you saw.”
After starting the season with four home games, the Leafs will now head out on the road where Hiller will not have the last-change advantage.
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The Leafs are hoping to carry the momentum from Tuesday’s crazy comeback all the way to the Vegas strip.
“That’s a huge win for our group,” McKenna said. “I don’t think for a second in that room we thought we were going to lose. We were super confident. I think that’s the way we got to play every single game. So, yeah, for us to get it done, it was a pretty special win. And for it to be before our big road trip, that’s even bigger. So we’re looking to just build off of it and hopefully have better starts.”
Despite picking up two points on Tuesday, Hiller noted that his team may have actually played better during losses to the Montreal Canadiens and Ottawa Senators.
It wasn’t always pretty, but finding a way to win a wild game can be significant when it comes to team building.
“We’re still trying to find that identity of being able to play all 60,” Roslovic acknowledged. “There’s been some parts that isn’t to what our standard is, and not that we’re trying to figure out our standard still, but I think everyone’s getting a really good feel for the way our team is going to be successful.”
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Lines to start Tuesday’s game:
Marchenko - Matthews - Roslovic
McKenna - Tavares - Nylander
Cowan - Paul - Sissons
Duhaime - Blueger - Groulx
McCabe - Tanev
Rielly - Raddysh
Ekman-Larsson - Stecher
Stolarz starts
Bobrovsky