Auston Matthews is turning heads at Maple Leafs camp, and it's his own teammate doing the talking.
Chris Tanev didn't hold back Wednesday when asked about his captain's pre-camp skates.
"He worked extremely hard this summer and put in all the work he needed to do to be how he always is and an extremely effective player and one of the best players in the league," Tanev said.
That's a loaded quote considering where Matthews finished last season. He posted 27 goals and 26 assists for 53 points in 60 games, a quieter campaign by his own standard.
The Maple Leafs need him operating at full strength. Toronto stumbled to a 32-36-14 finish, missed the mark badly on goal differential at 253 for and 299 against, and closed the year on a seven-game losing streak.
A last-10 mark of 2-7-1 heading into the offseason wasn't just ugly, it was the kind of freefall that gets a locker room asking hard questions all summer.
Tanev himself faces a season-opening question mark
Here's the twist nobody's talking about. Tanev is dealing with an abdomen issue and is questionable for the start of the season himself.
The 36-year-old defenseman managed just 11 games last year, finishing with two points and a plus-8 rating in limited action.
So the guy vouching for Matthews' training camp form is fighting his own health battle just to be ready for puck drop. That's not lost on anyone paying attention in Toronto.
Matthews carries a 13,250,000 cap hit, the kind of number that demands exactly the player Tanev described, not the version who posted a minus-4 rating over his last 10 games.
Is talk cheap in September? Sure. But when a respected defensive stalwart like Tanev throws that kind of praise around unprompted, it tends to land differently than a coach's generic training camp platitudes.
Jim Hiller takes over behind the Toronto bench this season after replacing the previous staff, and how he deploys Matthews out of the gate will say plenty about what this team actually believes heading into opening night.
He worked extremely hard this summer and put in all the work he needed to do to be how he always is and an extremely effective player and one of the best players in the league.
-
None of it means anything until the Leafs actually win games that matter, and last season's second-half collapse is still fresh enough to keep the skepticism alive.
Do you believe Chris Tanev's praise means Auston Matthews is back to elite form?
Also read on Markerzone.com:
Confirmation from Sidney Crosby involving his retirement date is something fans never thought they'd hear
