After the Maple Leafs’ 2025-26 season concluded, Auston Matthews made the following statement about the highly disappointing campaign:
This was a tough year and a frustrating year. We didn’t meet the goals or expectations we set out at the start. Ultimately, that is on me. That is on us as players. We’re the ones who have to go out there, compete, and play the game. We didn’t do that well enough consistently enough this year to put ourselves in a better spot.
We love our fans. We appreciate our fans. I think we understand their frustration. We wear that alongside them. I think everybody here wants to win and wants to do their part to help the team win.
I love being the captain of this team. I think it is an incredible honour to wake up every day and wear this jersey. That is not lost on me, even despite the circumstances and the way this season went.
Since then, the Maple Leafs have hired a new GM and Senior Executive Advisor — whom Matthews has yet to meet with — and the team miraculously won the 2026 draft lottery.
Yet reports continue to percolate about Matthews’ commitment to the team moving forward, suggesting he needs to see a plan articulated and enacted:
Friedman on 32 Thoughts: pic.twitter.com/pRjswZb5GM
— Willyston Riellander (@nylanderthews) May 8, 2026
On the Matthews-Leafs two-way street, and the Craig Berube litmus test
Let’s be clear here: Auston Matthews didn’t just score 50 goals or 95+ points as the Maple Leafs finished fifth last in the league.
The Leafs didn’t just take a step back and miss the postseason after past playoff runs in which Matthews did McDavid-like things, such as piling up 42 points and winning a Conn Smythe despite his team losing in the Finals.
The Leafs were bad last season, and Auston Matthews’ disappointing season — 66th in points-per-game among players with 50 or more games played, with the second-highest cap hit — is one big reason out of many reasons why they failed.
The Leafs need to be better for Auston Matthews, from management down to the coaching staff, whose deployment strategy was questionable at best. Auston Matthews also needs to be better for the Maple Leafs.
The reports of late, if true, suggest that Matthews would enter the meeting with Mats Sundin and John Chayka looking for some kind of reassurance — and proof of concept — before there is a complete commitment to working together next year. It is totally fair for Matthews to want a clear plan articulated — one demonstrating an intent to win soon, as Matthews approaches 30 — and to be reassured that he is central to it, so long as he wants to be. But let’s be clear: Both sides, management and Matthews, should sit down together and tell each other where and how they’ll be better next year.
In his exit interview, Matthews was completely reasonable, given the uncertainty at the time. It would also be premature for him to conduct further interviews or send word through his agent, making any declarations about the future without even meeting with the new management group.
At the end of the season, Matthews didn’t sound like someone with one foot out the door as his agent polished off the final touches on his formal trade request. He sounded like someone who would prefer to stay and win in Toronto but needed certainty regarding timelines for a return to contention. And the only thing that has materially changed since the exit interview is that the Maple Leafs hired John Chayka and Mats Sundin into senior management positions, who reiterated publicly that Matthews and Nylander aren’t going anywhere, before the Leafs won the draft lottery the next day, securing the first-overall pick.
It’s not clear what Matthews’ impressions of Chayka would be, and I won’t pretend to know what Matthews is thinking. There is some kind of a past — if not relationship — familiarity here from Arizona. It has also been reported publicly that the Matthews family is close with Shane Doan’s family — they attend the same church — and that Doan’s exit under Chayka was not handled tactfully (it is not expected that Doan will remain with the Leafs organization at this time). That doesn’t mean Matthews, or even Doan, holds any Paul Bissonnette-style grudges here. Who knows, and it’s not worth baselessly speculating about.
Certainly, there is a mutual respect with Mats Sundin, who just passed the baton to Matthews as the franchise’s all-time leading goal scorer.
From the outside looking in, this seems like a straightforward meeting in which new management articulates the plan to integrate their first-overall pick into the organization/lineup with guidance from Matthews, and to aggressively improve the defense and depth areas of the roster with the available cap space, all done with an intent to compete next season.
That leads us to the elephant in the room: Craig Berube. What does Matthews truly think here? You won’t find a former player who doesn’t speak glowingly of Berube the person, but how does Matthews feel about Berube the coach? There is no doubt that Matthews’ production hasn’t thrived under this coach. It’s one thing to buy into a certain deployment strategy and a reduction in individual production for the sake of a greater cause when it leads to the season the Leafs had in 2024-25. It’s much different when the individual numbers are what they are and the Leafs finished where they did in 2025-26.
Readers of this space need no reminding of our position on Craig Berube. He should’ve been fired in November of 2025. This Berube decision is now a litmus test for a whole bunch of reasons. It’s known Pelley is a Berube fan, but nothing Chayka pointed out about the team’s flaws last season — a lot of players underperforming relative to their historical contributions, defensive-zone exits, neutral-zone play, team speed — is suggestive of a team that failed despite competent coaching. Will Pelley/ownership indeed give Chayka that freedom — and resources, given the expensive severance owed to Berube — to make this call as he sees fit? Will Chayka make the right call if he has the autonomy to do so?
I wouldn’t understand Matthews looking at the team’s public statements and financial commitments to him, its recent lottery win, the fact that they’ve missed the playoffs just once in 10 years (which he played a notable part in), and his position as captain of this group of players and concluding, “I’m not sold – trade me.” But I would understand having some serious reservations about returning under the same coach.
So, stay tuned. It’s been a whirlwind week in Leafland, and the drama has only just begun.
