The 2024 NHL All-Star Game went off without a hitch Saturday, with hometown hero Auston Matthews being named MVP of the game in front of die-hard Maple Leafs fans.
It’s a measure of time’s fast movement that the 26-year-old superstar center is already in his eighth NHL season, and in this cover story from THN’s Draft Preview edition (Vol. 69, Issue 15), Ryan Kennedy profiled Matthews before he became a fixture on the Toronto sports scene.
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Growing up in Arizona, Matthews was not in a hockey-mad market anywhere close to that of Toronto. But from a very young age, his athletic ability was clear to all who saw him. His father, Brian Matthews, tested him often in the baseball batter’s box, throwing anything he could muster at his boy.
“I was throwing everything at him, mixing it up,” Brian Matthews told Kennedy. “He never knew what was coming. But his hand-eye co-ordination was uncanny.”
Matthews rose through the ranks at the under-18 amateur level, and in 2015-16, he spent a season playing in the Swiss National League against veteran pro players. He wound up scoring 24 goals in 36 games with the Zurich Lions and put the hockey world on notice – he was a generational type performer.