Auston Matthews celebrates his overtime winner with William Nylander Saturday night at the Bell Centre.Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images
His first goal was an are-you-serious assemblage of solo skill and endeavour, the second was merely another overtime winner. At this rate, the Auston Matthews highlight reel is headed for feature-film length.
And yes, Toronto Maple Leafs fans, your team has at long last snapped a 3 1/2– year winless hoodoo against the hated Montreal Canadiens – before Saturday's 4-3 win it stood at 0-for-14 – but really, that's incidental.
What the tilt at the Bell Centre revealed more than anything was the margin for error provided by a singular talent and the growing confidence of a young team.
In truth, Matthews was largely contained on this evening by Habs checking centre Tomas Plekanec and top defensive pair of Shea Weber and 19-year-old rookie Victor Mete (after the game Matthews gave a stick tap to the latter, calling him an "unbelievable skater").
Matthews's line was snowed under possession-wise, and he only had three shots on goal.
But he scored on two of them, had another waved off for a high stick and whiffed on at least one wide-open chance on a slick feed from William Nylander in the third period.
The hallmark of great players is they need only the slenderest opening to sink you, and can be safely relied upon to conjure those moments when they count most.
And would you look at that: In his first 87 regular-season NHL games Matthews has 10 game-winning goals.
The latest came on a two-on-one with his sidekick Nylander 48 seconds into overtime, at the end of a shift long enough to raise coaches' eyebrows, if not their ire, when he corralled and briefly mishandled a pass before rifling a shot into the top corner to Carey Price's stick side.
Nylander's leaping embrace after the puck went in – it could also be described fairly as a choke-hold – spoke volumes.
This is the sort of game the Leafs made a habit of losing last season.
It's a well-worn hockey cliché that young hockey teams need to learn how to win, and on Saturday Leafs coach Mike Babcock was asked whether he feels his charges are doing that.
"I don't know the answer to that, to be honest with you. We're not playing near as good as we were near the end of last year, not even close," he said. "But, in saying that, we're probably playing better than we were at this time last year. We have more talent, but we can still play way better and we plan on getting better."
Patrick Marleau, the Leafs winger and resident greybeard, said in his lengthy experience, winning in the NHL is about resiliency, consistency and "knowing and believing in your teammates."
It also helps to have a player with Matthews's nose for decisive situations.
Babcock knows a little bit about what is required to capitalize on high-leverage situations, given his lengthy international experience coaching the NHL's pre-eminent collector of signature moments (Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins).
"They're good players," he said Saturday outside the Bell Centre's visiting dressing room, "they want to be in those moments and guys who have been doing that their whole life just believe they're going to get it done at that time."
In Matthews's case, the belief is justified. Teammates and opponents alike were agog at his first marker, which he scored after flipping the puck over forechecker Charles Hudon, racing through the neutral zone, batting down Jordie Benn's feeble clearing attempt and zipping a big-time shot through defenceman Brandon Davidson and past an off-balance Price.
"Sick goal," is how Nylander summed it up.
"You have to tip your hat to him," said Montreal defenceman Karl Alzner.
Of the top 50 goal-scoring seasons in NHL history, only three have been recorded this century (by Pavel Bure, Alex Ovechkin and Steven Stamkos). Just two of them, Stamkos and Ovechkin, topped 60; no player in the current dead-puck era has scored more than Ovechkin's 65 in 2007-08 – when the Russian was 22. At his current scoring clip it's a safe bet Matthews will join them. In his past 24 NHL games, including last season's playoffs, Matthews has scored 18 times – including five in his past five.