Matthews is down but not out in the Rocket Richard Trophy race; Here's how many he'll need to score to have a chance of a 3-peat
We are quickly approaching the halfway mark of the NHL season and as it currently stands, Connor McDavid sits atop the NHL - not only in points - but in goals as well with 25. Behind him are a few surprise names that not many, if any, pegged to be up there and closing in on the race with Jason Robertson at 23, Tage Thompson at 21, Bo Horvat at 20, and then Mikko Rantanen rounding out the top 5 goal scorers with 19 goals on the season.
Two names surprisingly omitted from that last are 9-time Rocket Richard Trophy winner Alex Ovechkin and the reigning, defending goal scoring champ in Auston Matthews. As of today, Ovechkin is in a 4-way tie for 8th place with William Nylander, Sidney Crosby, and Kirill Kaprizov with 17 goals and Matthews is currently 13th with 15 goals.
For most players, having scored 15 goals in 29 games would be a career year or at least on pace for a career year. However, for someone of Matthews' ilk, having scored 148 goals in 195 games from 2019-20 to 2021-22 - a 0.76 goals per game pace - having 15 in 29 seems like a bit of a down year.
He started the season with 2 goals in his first 9 games and then 9 goals in his first 22 but has since rattled off 6 goals in his last 7 games, on top of a 7-game point streak. At the 29-game-juncture last year he scored 20 goals on 127 shots for a whopping 15.7% success rate, the year prior he scored 21 in 29 on 118 shots for a 17.6% success rate, and even going back to 2019-20 he scored 16 in 29 on 107 shots for a 15% success rate.
This year he has fired 129 shots, more than the previous season, but his shooting percentage is down to 11%, which would explain the lower number of goals scored. Goal scorers are a finicky bunch as they usually score in bunches and will have moments and patches of zeroes. Matthews, on the other hand, is a different breed. His longest stretches of inactivity over the last 3 seasons were 4 games without a goal in 2021-22, 3 games without a goal in 2020-21, and 3 games in 2019-20.
So far this season he had a stretch of 5 games without a goal and another stretch of 3. It seems like maybe we can call it an outlier but on the outside, looking in, it's crazy to be saying that someone with 15 goals in 29 games is having a sub-par season but when your expectations and standards are so high, it's the name of the game.
As it stands today, Matthews is 10 goals behind the leader with 53 games left on the season so anything can happen and considering the 11% scoring rate, one would have to imagine he dials it up and finishes closer to the career average of 16.7% that he entered the season with. In the 3 years between 2019-20 and 2021-22 he was shooting at a 17.2% success rate. He is currently 4th in the NHL in shots on goal and is still within striking distance of the top of the league in goals.
Matthews is currently on pace to finish the season with 42 goals, but we all saw what happened last season when the calendar flipped over to 2022 and he and Marner absolute went supersonic. In the past 10 seasons, 9 players won Rocket Richard Trophies having scored 53 goals or less, with Matthews' 60-goal season last year being the outlier. If we set the approximate Rocket Richard mark at, say, 55 goals this season, Matthews would need to score 40 goals in his next 53 games to hit that mark. Considering the fact that he scored 51 goals in a 50-game stretch last season, it's entirely possible that he comes back in the race and finishes in that range or higher again this season. The question is, will one of the players currently on pace to score more than 55, such as Connor McDavid or Jason Robertson, exceed that mark - and by how much?
Call me crazy, but I don't think this race is over for Matthews by a long shot!
| POLL | ||
DECEMBRE 13 | 248 ANSWERS Matthews is down but not out in the Rocket Richard Trophy race; Here's how many he'll need to score to have a chance of a 3-peat Will Auston Matthews threepeat as the Rocket Richard Trophy winner? | ||
| Yes | 72 | 29 % |
| No | 176 | 71 % |
| List of polls | ||
