Is Auston Matthews an Employee or a Hockey Thinker?
The Toronto Maple Leafs’ use of Auston Matthews under former head coach Craig Berube last season is raising questions about how the star forward will be deployed under a new coaching staff. Matthews was asked to take on a heavier defensive role as a 200-foot centre, and while he handled it well, it may have come at the expense of his offence.
With the Maple Leafs entering a period of change in both leadership and coaching, there is growing curiosity about how the organization views Matthews’ ideal role. Is he being used primarily as a system-driven centre responsible for structure and detail, or is there room for a more offence-first approach that better maximizes his elite scoring ability?
How does the Maple Leafs coaching staff see him as a player? That has to be on his mind.
One thing you can never accuse Matthews of is going rogue and not doing what the coach asks of him. Take last season, for example. Under former head coach Craig Berube, he was deployed as a 200-foot centre and asked to adopt a more defensive orientation. To his credit, Matthews did just that.
One stat in particular suggests the shift. He ranked third among all NHL forwards in shots blocked. There’s no argument that Matthews should play defence, but he always did that. Early in his career, then-President Brendan Shanahan encouraged fans to watch Matthews’ defence and called him a Selke Award candidate one day.
But the way he was deployed last season took a toll on Matthews’ offensive production. He was below a point-a-game pace and was injured for part of the season. One can only assume that Matthews was less than pleased with both the team’s season and his own.
Now with the new leadership group in place and a new coach to be hired, it isn’t illogical to wonder what Matthews wants to see change.
A question for the Maple Leafs leadership—including the coaching staff—is how they see Matthews.
When people talk about Matthews, there are really two different ways of seeing him. And depending on which one you believe, you end up with two completely different versions of what the Maple Leafs should be.
Is Matthews an employee who does what he’s told?
The first view is simple. Matthews is an elite player, but an employee of the system. He is there to execute instructions at a world-class level. The coach defines the structure, the responsibilities, the defensive details, the matchups—and Matthews carries them out. In that model, success is measured by compliance: are you doing what the system asks, consistently and correctly?
That’s one way to build a team. It’s organized. It’s controlled. It’s predictable. It’s often called “structure.”
Is Matthews a high-IQ hockey thinker who should have a say in the team’s play?
But there’s another way to see him that I think gets overlooked. Matthews isn’t just a player who executes instructions. He’s a high-IQ hockey thinker playing at the top end of the sport. He reads plays early. He understands spacing instinctively. He doesn’t just react to systems—he reads through them.
In that sense, he’s not only part of the structure. He’s also interpreting it in real time, often faster than it can be explained from the bench. And once you accept that version of him, everything changes.
How team leadership sees Matthews shapes the team.
Because now the question isn’t “is he following the coach’s plan?” The question becomes: how do you build a plan that respects what he already sees?
That’s a very different coaching philosophy. The first one treats the player as an extension of instruction. The second treats the player as part of the system's intelligence.
Having watched Matthews from the start with this team, I think that tension matters more than people realize when evaluating what Toronto has been and what it’s trying to become.
The Maple Leafs can make mistakes both ways.
If the Maple Leafs leadership leans too far into the “employee” model, it risks flattening elite instinct into compliance. You get structure, but you may also get a version of Matthews that is less dangerous offensively than he could be. If you lean too far into the “independent thinker” model, you risk losing structure altogether and asking players to solve too much on their own.
The balance is where good teams live.
What Matthews might be waiting to see.
But here’s the real question underneath all of it, the one Toronto has to answer without really saying it: When the Maple Leafs design their system, are they designing it for Matthews to follow, or for Matthews to think inside of?
Because those are not the same thing. And how an organization answers that question doesn’t just shape tactics. It shapes identity.
My guess is that Matthews is waiting for the Maple Leafs leadership to show how much it values him, and in what ways.