Inside Auston Matthews’ motivation to recapture ‘my standard’ for the Maple Leafs

It was the day before the start of the 2025-26 season and Auston Matthews was in good spirits, great spirits even.

The previous season had been a hard one, from start to finish, for the 28-year-old captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs. That was in the past, though. Sort of. Last season — the way it went for Matthews personally, the way it went for the Leafs — still lingered in the way that Matthews was approaching this season.

Above all was his determination to regain the form, which won him three Rocket Richard trophies along with the first MVP by a Leaf in nearly 70 years, in the belief that it might just lift the Leafs closer to their ultimate goal, to his ultimate goal.

“I know that the level I was at last year wasn’t up to my standard,” Matthews, seated at his dressing room stall at the team’s practice facility in Etobicoke, told The Athletic in a one-on-one conversation. “And whatever the factors are — health, etc. — for myself, I think just the extra motivation (is there) to get back to that level and that standard that I hold myself to. Because I know if I play like that, then the team has success as well.

“I definitely feel like there’s a little extra motivation, especially in stuff like that.”

Speaking on the eve of his 10th NHL season, Matthews said his own expectations hadn’t really changed from the previous nine.

“I think every year you want to do more, you want to accomplish more,” he said. “But in the end, I know where I’m at and I know where I stand as far as my game and all the other stuff. It’s really about winning. That’s always the main focus coming into the new season. But you want to be a better version of yourself than you were the year prior. Obviously, we’re all after one goal. Thirty-two teams are looking at each other right now saying, ‘What are we trying to accomplish?’ Everybody’s trying to accomplish one thing.”

And that was the thing, Matthews went on.

All of his greatest individual seasons and there were a lot of them — a 40-goal, Calder Trophy-winning rookie season, a 60-goal Hart Trophy-winning season, a 69-goal season — still felt the same in the end when the team didn’t accomplish that end goal of winning the Stanley Cup.

I used the word “hollow,” and Matthews concurred. That was the feeling.

“I think not accomplishing the team goal,” Matthews explained, “you’re still left with the same feeling, regardless of if you score a hundred goals or if you score 20, you know what I mean. Like, you’re just in the same spot of emotions and feeling like you didn’t accomplish what you really set out to accomplish.”

Yet he knew all the same that the only way his team would have a chance of even sniffing that still-elusive championship goal would be with him performing at his very best, at a level he could not reach last season because of injury.

His importance to the Leafs has only grown in Mitch Marner’s absence.

The Leafs need his goals, need his ace-level defending more than ever. He is playing the biggest minutes of his career right now, around 22 minutes per game.

WILLIAM NYLANDER.
AUSTON MATTHEWS.
OVERTIME WINNER!!!@OREO | #LeafsForever pic.twitter.com/6mkMRuC4Sk

— Toronto Maple Leafs (@MapleLeafs) October 17, 2025

What would be a good year for him, I asked.

He laughed.

“I mean, I think that’s a bit of a loaded question,” Matthews said. “If I scored 69 goals and all this stuff, but we fall short of the (end) goal, it doesn’t feel — it feels like a good season, but it’s like you’re left feeling pretty …”

Hollow?

“Yeah,” he said. “You’re feeling empty in a sense because you’re like, as good as that all feels, nothing feels as good as accomplishing something together as a group.”

“That is a loaded question,” he added with another chuckle.

Matthews hasn’t gotten back to that top level just yet.

He’s tied for fourth on the Leafs in scoring through seven games with six points, scoring four goals. Two of those were deposited into empty nets.

One of Matthews’ superpowers from the day he stepped into the NHL has been beating goalies from places that no other shooters can. That skill hasn’t returned so far: He’s yet to beat a goalie from the mid range, a source of 23 of his goals (on a wicked 18 percent shooting) during that record-setting 69-goal season. (League average that year: three.) Matthews scored only eight such goals last season, shooting just 8.5 percent.

“It’s just getting in those spots and being able to get a shot off,” he said during another one-on-one conversation at training camp. “I just found last year, a lot of times I’d get the puck in that area and there wouldn’t be a lot of space.”

Matthews does feel as though he’s regained the power to beat goalies from those spots. The key would be finding more separation.

He has gotten his looks at times this month, ranking right near the top of the league in shots from both the mid-range and high-danger zones. He just hasn’t converted much so far.

Clearly, and not surprisingly, Matthews has missed Marner’s playmaking wizardry. The two were linemates for the better part of the previous five seasons.

It hasn’t looked or felt the same way without him, though it’s fair to wonder what effect the team’s style under head coach Craig Berube is having on Matthews’ scoring.

One notable indicator: Matthews is generating fewer than five high-danger attempts on goal per 60 minutes this season at five-on-five for the first time since the 2019-20 season. His marks in those five earlier seasons: 5.7, 6.6, 6.5, 5.9, 6.8.

Even penalty killing without Marner is different for Matthews.

“(Penalty killing) with him was relatively – I don’t know if ‘easy’ is the right word,” Matthews said in conversation at camp, “but just because he’s done it for a long time,” it was simpler for Matthews to just follow Marner’s lead.

Matthews has blocked a ton of shots so far, but, strikingly, has registered just a single takeaway. He ranked second among all NHL forwards with 85 two seasons ago.

Matthews and Marner, together, were a superstar puck-thieving duo. And right now, the Leafs simply aren’t possessing the puck nearly as much as they typically have (or should) in Matthews’ minutes, another byproduct of Marner’s departure.

Their struggles to sustain time in the offensive zone have been a particular source of frustration to Berube.

Auston Matthews has six points in the first seven games of the season. (Nick Turchiaro / Imagn Images)

It’s a period of transition for the Leafs, and for Matthews, as Berube tries desperately to find some kind of solution for the right wing spot long held by a superstar. The Leafs coach has already cycled through three wingers — Matias Maccelli, Easton Cowan and Max Domi, all the while mixing in William Nylander for stints with Matthews and Matthew Knies.

None of it has worked.

Never before in his career have the Leafs been outplayed in Matthews’ five-on-five minutes. But that’s what’s happening right now. Shot attempts. Scoring chances. High-danger shot attempts. Expected goals. The Leafs are losing all of them with their best player and top line on the ice.

Which makes some sense on the one hand. Subtract one of the very best right wingers in the NHL and replace him with a castoff (Maccelli), a 20-year-old rookie (Cowan) and an ill-fitting piece (Domi), and the results were bound to take a hit.

Still, with Matthews there and with Knies by his side, the line should be able to control play more than it has. It might just take more time than he and the team would like.

Adding Nylander to the line full-time may provide the spark that’s been lacking.

Matthews doesn’t look limited physically like he was throughout last season’s career-low 33-goal campaign. However, his top speeds, skating and shooting the puck have yet to reach even last season’s levels.

Is he back? It’s still too early to tell. The Leafs, struggling at the moment, obviously need him to get there. He knows it.

“Whatever goes on on the outside,” he said, “I don’t think I’ve ever really been somebody that looked at that and used it as motivation. I think it’s more so comes from within, internally, because I don’t think, no matter what, what other people think, say … is going to quite match up to how high I hold my own accountability to.”

— Stats and research courtesy of Natural Stat Trick, Hockey Reference, and NHL EDGE