How the Maple Leafs' Auston Matthews became the NHL's best goal scorer (2024)

There’s a reason many NHL goaltenders now train their eyes before games.

You may have even seen them doing the exercises on the bench, with Winnipeg Jets star Connor Hellebuyck, the reigning Vezina Trophy winner, the most obvious example.

While that looks bizarre, what goalies see — and don’t see — can be more vital than even a good glove hand or sound positioning when attempting to make a save. In a sport where the puck is often coming at them at nearly 100 mph, netminders need to zero in on as many of the signs as possible that a shot might be coming.

Shooters typically have tells — a dipped shoulder, a shift of the leg or a twitch of their stick blade. Know the tell, goalies say, and you might be able to react in time.

Wait to see the puck actually leave the stick?

“Zero chance,” says Craig Anderson, an 18-year NHL veteran now with the Washington Capitals. “Biomechanically and scientifically, it’s impossible. The human body does not react quick enough from the time the puck leaves the stick to the time it’s in the net. You have to pick up on the (shooter’s) cues if you have any chance of stopping the shot.”

That, in a nutshell, is why Auston Matthews poses such a problem.

The 23-year-old Maple Leafs star has run away with the NHL’s goal-scoring title this season. Despite playing through a wrist injury that didn’t allow him to grip his stick properly for long stretches of the year, Matthews piled up 41 goals in 52 games, a performance that ranks among the best in recent league history.

In fact, adjusted for era, his season sits 14th in a list of the greatest goal-scoring seasons in the last 90 years.

Matthews’ claim as the best goal scorer of his generation extends beyond this season. He leads the NHL in scoring over the past three seasons, with a remarkable 125 goals in 190 games, the equivalent of 54-goal pace over a full season. The past two years, meanwhile, he has 32 percent more even-strength goals than Alex Ovechkin, who sits second in that stat leaguewide.

If Matthews continues on his current trajectory – where he is improving each season to the point he is scoring nearly 0.80 goals per game as he enters his prime – the gap will only widen.

According to multiple NHL goaltenders surveyed by The Athletic, the biggest difference between Matthews and other top shooters they face is they don’t know where he is going to put the puck. More troublingly, they often don’t even know when he is going to shoot it.

That’s why you’ll sometimes see a goaltender who is not angry or frustrated after Matthews scores but merely confused.

But if Matthews isn’t overpowering goalies with the hardest or most accurate shots, what is so special and unique about what he is doing? And if his biggest asset is merely deception, how has he — as a young player in the league — become the very best at it?

To hear some tell it, he has found a way to expand the net, a skill he has developed through years of careful planning, preparation and practice.

And it might just be the start of something new for a league that has been searching for more offense since the days of Gretzky and Lemieux.

The swing coach

Matthews became a hockey player in a non-traditional way in the non-traditional environment of Scottsdale, Ariz. He learned on tiny 3-on-3 rinks and received unorthodox training for years, including not playing on expensive travel clubs like many of the area’s top players.

The result was a unique short-area game — the ability to stickhandle out of anything, essentially — which has allowed him to hold onto the puck and get into prime scoring areas again and again in the NHL.

All of those opportunities to shoot the puck gave him many, many chances to perfect the art. But he needed some help.

Matthews first met skills coach Darryl Belfry when he was a teenager. Then with the U.S. National Team Development Program, Matthews was a client of CAA, and the agency had partnered with Belfry to provide skill development guidance to some of its rising stars.

Seven years later, Belfry is on staff with the Leafs as a player development consultant. One of his biggest projects has been to work with Matthews on his shot, in much the same way a swing coach would fine tune a PGA Tour golfer’s swing.

The differences between a golf swing and shooting a hockey puck are myriad. A hockey player is balanced on skates on ice while moving rapidly and being pursued and checked by opponents. There’s also a very large opponent clad in enormous pads guarding a very small 4-by-6-foot opening where the player is attempting to deposit their shot.

There are no goalies to beat on a golf course.

Those extra layers of complexity make refining an NHL shooter’s technique difficult. What a player can do in a practice setting, unmolested, is often far different from what’s possible in game situations.

But over the past several years, Belfry has pushed Matthews to build, and then rebuild, his shooting mechanics, a process that has been more of a collaboration than a teacher-student relationship.

Together, they have studied the way goaltenders get “set” to make saves and tried to find ways to counter their techniques. They have analyzed every shot he attempted in games — which can be as many as 15 a night — and picked apart those that were unsuccessful. Then they have tried to account for “the misses” by coming up with things Matthews could have done differently.

Their work is often visible at Leafs practice, where teammates — like captain John Tavares, in the case of the video below — might join in. Belfry is in the corner, passing the puck.

For those who have watched it unfold over the years, it’s become a fascinating partnership. And it’s one of the secrets behind Matthews’ Rocket Richard Trophy-winning campaign this season.

“It’s a unique relationship,” says Brian Matthews, Auston’s father. “They’re like two heavyweights, with the utmost respect for each other, in a fight. After all these years, it feels like they’re in Round 39.

“I’ve seen Papi (Auston’s nickname) come off the ice pissed and frustrated he couldn’t master a new concept Darryl threw at him. Then the next day, he’s mastered it and Darryl’s skating off the ice shaking his head, wondering where to take the new skill and how he can push the envelope that much more.”

Brian Matthews says that some of what they work on is “exploring new territory and concepts no one has even contemplated yet.”

But how does one reinvent how to shoot a puck?

A chess match within the game

Belfry was not available for an interview for this story, as the Leafs do not permit staff to do interviews. But other skills coaches — in what’s become a small, competitive and increasingly important industry in the sport — were able to shed some light on how this business of rebuilding a player’s shot takes place.

It’s important, first of all, to think of scoring a goal in the NHL like a bit of a complex guessing game. Or, perhaps more appropriately, a chess match.

But let’s back up a step for a short history lesson. The entire need for a shooting coach stems from the fact that goaltenders have been in an arms race with shooters for three decades now, going back to when Patrick Roy revolutionized the position with the butterfly style in the late 1980s.

For most of that time, the goalies have been winning.

NHL goaltenders are trained by highly specialized goalie coaches to be experts at knowing and playing angles. They don’t play the angles that they see with their eyes — or even the ones that the shooters see when they’re coming down on them in net.

Instead, they spend decades learning to play the angles that the puck itself “sees” from its place on the ice.

The above image — from a goaltending training video put together by St. Louis Blues goalie coach David Alexander — is a good example of how well a modern pro hockey goalie covers the net from the perspective of the puck. All it takes to stop a blistering shot from this position is for the goalie to shrug his glove hands, covering the remaining open net up high.

No NHL goaltender is allowing a goal this position.

The way shooters have attempted to counteract this positioning is to get goalies moving. The best way to do that is to get them unset by generating pre-shot movement to change the angle of their shots.

The best way to do that is to either (a) pass the puck to a teammate who can place it in the net behind the goalie or (b) move the puck around with their stick in such a way that it changes the shot’s trajectory.

These aren’t brand new concepts or skills. One-timers are almost as old as hockey itself. And here’s Los Angeles Kings veteran Dustin Brown demonstrating how to change the angle on a wrist shot way back in 2014.

Where Matthews has been able to innovate further is with his ability to shift the angle of his shots to an extreme degree, turning his forays into the offensive zone into a sort of geometry equation.

More than how hard or accurately he shoots a puck — and he can do both, when required — what makes him so difficult for goalies to stop is his ability to generate a lot of pre-shot movement combined with a lack of tells.

Those are skills he has honed over the past five years with Belfry. Matthews has spent countless hours perfecting the ability to shoot in hundreds of different ways, including from in tight to his feet, leading with either his left or right leg, with his skates pointing in a different direction from the net, in the middle of a stickhandle, and many other odd combinations.

Matthews has also learned to skate on diagonals through the offensive zone — which is why you’ll sometimes see him skating away from the play before a goal — as a way of opening up different angles to shoot from, especially when he’s anticipating a pass from linemate Mitch Marner, one of the best playmakers in the game.

Matthews’ ability to fire the puck quickly, with power and accuracy, from all of those different positions while also not showing his hand to goaltenders is not something any other shooter in the NHL is doing consistently.

“Shooting (in the NHL) is about the ability to set up for the shot,” explains Dan Ninkovich, a Greater Toronto Area-based skills coach who trains top players like Taylor Hall and the Hughes brothers, Quinn and Jack. “The setup is far more important than the release.

“Any guy can rip a puck. But creating shooting lanes, by experience, and by design? It’s all about that.”

To envision what Ninkovich is talking about, picture that image of the goaltender above covering the entire net but shift the puck’s view to the left or right by four or five feet. That is, in effect, what Matthews is doing when he has the puck or when he’s about to receive it from a teammate before taking a shot.

The visual below is taken from an Ontario minor hockey training guide for shooters. It offers one example of the optical illusion that exists between what the puck “sees” and what the player sees.

What Matthews often attempts — using his ability to change angles while disguising his intention to shoot — is to get the puck into the open blue area that a goaltender believes they have covered while “set” in the butterfly position.

Even some of his most experienced Leafs teammates admit they are impressed with how Matthews has been able to combine and apply multiple difficult techniques learned in practice to game situations.

To date, they haven’t been able to do the same, despite similar instruction from Belfry and tips from Matthews.

“The way he incorporates his feet in his shooting is probably better than anyone in the game,” Jason Spezza says, calling Matthews’ two-footedness second to none in the NHL. “He generates force by moving his feet — and he shoots off both feet. He shoots off his feet planted, but at different times, the left foot is ahead of the right foot and at other times the right foot is ahead of the left foot. The constant change really keeps the goalie on edge.

“It’s something I marvel at every day … I’ve watched him, observed it, and I do it in practice, and I have some success with it. But in a game, I’m so engrained to sticking to the stuff that’s worked. I haven’t been able to implement it as much as I’d like. If it’s something you can do instinctively, like he does, it’s tricky for a goalie. Boy, it’s gotta be hard.”

Goalies concur: It is.

“The more options he has, the more things as a goalie you have to look at, and the more chances you have to be fooled,” Anderson says of Matthews’ lack of a tell when it comes to which leg he will shoot off of. “That’s definitely an issue with a guy that can do that. Auston’s the first.”

Flyers veteran James van Riemsdyk played with Matthews during his first two seasons in Toronto. A goal scorer himself, with 264 in nearly 800 NHL games, van Riemsdyk has built his career on finding unique ways to put the puck in the net and learning from those around him.

What’s impressed him the most about Matthews to date is that he has continued to improve exponentially, even after scoring 40 goals in his rookie season four years ago.

Van Riemsdyk calls Matthews’ drive and attention to detail “better than pretty much anyone else I’ve ever seen” during his 12 years in the league.

“You have a shot like he has and then you have the wherewithal to add a shot off the other leg, to be more deceptive? It’s hard to want to do that just because of how much success he already had doing things a certain way,” van Riemsdyk says. “It just shows his commitment to really maximizing his potential. That’s a great example of thinking of a few steps down the road and about how he can keep getting better.

“The rate he’s scored goals to start his career is pretty insane. And he keeps pushing that envelope every year and finding ways to score more goals.”

Van Riemsdyk chuckled, recalling their conversations when they sat next to each other in the Leafs dressing room.

“He’s never satisfied,” he said. “It’s pretty impressive to see.”

That commitment to the continual refinement of all these various tactics is what has made Matthews the most versatile shooter in the NHL. This season alone he has scored his 41 goals on wrist shots, snap shots, one-timers, backhands, breakaway dekes, tip-ins, redirections and wraparounds.

The breadth of that arsenal has made him one of the toughest tests, even for goalies who have faced him again and again this season in the North Division.

“A lot of guys get in certain positions and have scored certain goals on certain sides of the net or certain angles, and when they get the puck, they tend to go back to those tendencies,” explains Canadiens goaltender Jake Allen, who has been beaten by Matthews six times in his career, including five times in five different games this season. “Matthews is an open book. He does what he feels. He’s not as easy to read or easy to understand as most players.”

“If they show you one thing and do the complete opposite, that’s the ability to trick the goalie,” says Anderson, who Matthews has beaten 12 times in his career. “Auston’s got that. He’s on the top of his game for deception.”

Is Matthews a sign of things to come?

As Matthews has continued to pile up goals this season, NHL skills coaches, shooters and goaltenders have had a running debate behind the scenes about what his success means.

Is Matthews ushering in a new generation of super shooters who lack tells and can beat goalies in a variety of ways? Or is he merely a super freak, a one-off like Eric Lindros or Dominik Hasek who is doing things that will be impossible to fully duplicate?

What’s true is that part of what allows Matthews to score the way he does is his unique physiology. At 6-foot-3 and 210 pounds, he has a frame and a strength that is uncommon for someone with his level of agility and finesse. Few big men possess his hands and hand-eye coordination.

On top of that, Matthews wingspan is nearly 6-foot-9, which allows him to corral pucks a long way from his body, even while using a short — and basically unremarkable — stick. His size, meanwhile, gives him enough strength to generate flex on the stick even at odd angles, like when the puck is in his feet, which makes him even more deceptive.

“He’s the perfect hockey player build,” Ninkovich says. “Tall with a low center of gravity. Long, long arms. Big overall but a small torso.”

Meanwhile, Matthews’ intensive off-season regimen with new trainer Ian Mack allowed him to deploy his body in unusual ways in order to pull off some of his new maneuvers, including those that call for his lower body and upper body to act completely independently.

For most NHL players, the act of shooting means they stop shifting their lower body position. Not Matthews.

“We wanted to increase his mobility,” Mack says of the work they did, comparing what Matthews tries to do on the ice to the contortions of a gymnast or baseball pitcher. “(He needs) to be able to disassociate his joints so he can turn, and still stay stable with his lower body, lined up with his upper body, and keep those two parts of his body doing separate things, and then put them all together when he shoots.

“That’s exactly what we wanted to do. We’re super excited it translated to the ice.”

A few NHL stars like the Avalanche’s Nathan MacKinnon have started to emulate some of Matthews’ techniques, with some degree of success. But even someone as gifted as MacKinnon needs to have his own approach to the concepts in order to make them his own.

“We all take stuff from each other,” Spezza says. “But there’s certain subtleties everybody has on different plays and moves that are harder to replicate than most. You can watch Auston shoot as much as you want, but what he does day after day after day, it’s pretty impressive.”

Van Riemsdyk isn’t sure anyone will be able to replicate exactly what Matthews is doing, given his remarkable work ethic and talent. He has tried, to some extent, while keeping in touch with his former teammate in order to share thoughts on innovations in equipment and training.

Van Riemsdyk believes Matthews’ ascent could be part of what’s needed to help tip the scales in the direction of shooters after so much advancement in goaltending since the high-scoring 1980s.

The use of a dedicated skills coach is becoming more and more prevalent and, in Matthews’ case, it has allowed him to find something new and unique.

Replicating his success with Belfry is going to be a growing focus for shooters and their skills coaches across the league in the years to come.

“More and more guys are putting a lot more detailed, individualized work into their game,” van Riemsdyk says. “That’ll probably lead to more offense (in the NHL).

“With how much better the goalies are now, it’s almost impossible (to beat them on an uncontested shot). What Auston’s doing — beating the goalies when they’re set, on a clean shot — that’s really hard to do now. The fact that he’s been able to do that has been pretty insane and crazy to look at.

“He’s definitely a unicorn.”

(Illustration: John Bradford; photos: Mark Blinch, Kevin Sousa, Claus Anderson / Getty Images)