3 Reasons the Maple Leafs Should Build Around Auston Matthews
The Toronto Maple Leafs should be doing everything they reasonably can to keep Auston Matthews in Toronto long-term. Once you strip away the noise, it’s really not that complicated.
Why should the Maple Leafs build their team around this generational talent?
Reason One: You don’t move a player like Matthews — you build around him.
Matthews isn’t just a good player; he’s a franchise-level scorer who changes how teams defend you every single night. Guys like that don’t come around often, and when they do, you don’t casually start shopping them like they’re interchangeable pieces.
The idea of trading him while he’s still under contract, especially after the organization spent years trying to build a “win-now” window around him, just doesn’t line up with reality. If anything, the Maple Leafs’ challenge has never been finding a star. It’s been building the right structure around the one they already have.
Reason Two: The problem has been Matthews’ usage, not his talent.
There’s been this slow drift in Toronto hockey debates where elite offensive players get talked about like they need to become something else. Head coach Craig Berube moved to make Matthews more defensive, more “200-foot,” more complete in ways that sometimes just dilute what makes them special.
Matthews is not the problem here. If anything, the question is whether the team has always maximized what it used to do best. That means getting Matthews the puck in space so he can score at an elite rate. He doesn’t need to be turned into a different kind of player. He needs to be put in positions where he can do damage. That’s it. You can defend without turning your best weapon into a grind-line hybrid.
Reason Three: You don’t replace Matthews’ level of talent — you add to it.
The Maple Leafs don’t need to downgrade from Matthews; they need to support him better. The point of this conversation is to build a team by drafting Gavin McKenna. He’s potentially a high-end play driver who can feed Matthews in dangerous spots.
That’s the real goal: not replacing Matthews, not rethinking Matthews, but amplifying him.
Getting Matthews back to who he is should be the Maple Leafs’ key goal.
Players like Mitch Marner (in his Maple Leafs years) showed how dangerous Toronto can be when elite talent is properly connected. The lesson shouldn’t be to break that up — it should be to recreate it in a way that actually holds up under playoff pressure.
There’s no realistic hockey argument for treating Matthews like anything other than the centrepiece. You don’t get many chances in this league to have a player who can define an era for your franchise — especially an Original Six one.
So instead of debating whether he should stay, the real conversation is how you make sure the environment around him finally matches his level.