A year ago today, Toronto Maple Leafs’ newly-minted captain, Auston Matthews, signed a 4-year extension that made him the highest paid athlete in the sport.
Entering the final year of his 5-year contract in 2023-24, the Maple Leafs decided to extend Matthews before the puck even dropped for pre-season action. His new deal was a 4-year extension that was worth $13.25 million per season, a number that will make him the highest paid player in the league in 2024-25, surpassing Nathan MacKinnon’s $12.6 million cap hit.
There was certainly some criticism thrown towards player and team, mostly because Matthews’ only signed for 4 more years rather than the max 8-year term that was available, bringing about more speculation on his extended future in Toronto. However with John Tavares’ passing the captaincy over this past month, I think all those rumours and speculations can be swept under the rug.
Now, as we head into the 2024-25 season, there will be even more pressure and attention focused on Matthews. For most players, trying to match a career-high of 69 goals and 107 points the following season seems like an improbability, but for a player of his ilk, Matthews might just be able to do it again with relative ease.
Last year he scored 0.852 goals per game, and while that seems staggering, he also scored 0.822 goals per game in 2021-22 and 0.788 goals per game in 2020-21. The anomaly seems to be the 2022-23 season, where he managed 40 goals in 74 games while playing through a severe wrist injury.
If he can suit up for a full 82-game season, the sky is truly the limit for Matthews and we might finally have our first 70-goal season since the 1992-93 campaign when both Alexander Mogilny and Teemu Selanne reached that feat with 76 goals apiece.
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