The NHL kicked off 2025 by announcing the quarter-century teams for each NHL team, with the Maple Leafs featuring five players on the current roster. Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, and Morgan Rielly all cracked the Leafs’ quarter-century first team, while William Nylander and John Tavares made the second team. The teams featured vintage legends like Mats Sundin, Tomas Kaberle, and Ed Belfour, and if nothing else, it’s been fun to analyze the teams as it drives the debate of who makes up the best six forwards, four defencemen, and two goaltenders for each team in the past 25 years.
Earlier this week, a team of panellists at our sister site DailyFaceoff including TLN’s very own Arun Srinivasan and Nick Alberga among others got together to brainstorm an all-time quarter-century team from all 32 NHL teams, featuring 25 players. Likely to the surprise of nobody, Auston Matthews was the lone Maple Leaf to crack the list, coming in at #18. Here’s what the folks at DFO had to say about the logic behind Matthews’ presence on the list.
“Matthews is the first player on this list for which some projection is likely factored in, consciously or not. What he’s already done should land him in the Hall of Fame, to be clear: he’s a three-time Rocket Richard winner, a Hart winner, and he’s only player this quarter century to deliver multiple 60-goal seasons. His 69 last season stand as the highest single-season total this quarter century. But the fact he’s pacing ahead of Ovechkin’s all-time goal-scoring rate through the same number of games likely influenced the vote. We know Matthews will be looked back on as one of the two greatest goal scorers of the past three decades – and maybe a top-two pure sniper ever. To climb higher on this list, however, he would’ve needed more than one playoff series win with the Toronto Maple Leafs.”
All things considered, it’s a fair ranking for Matthews on this list. He’s just entering the prime of his career and he’s done some absolutely absurd things early in his career, including hitting the 60-goal mark twice, but his playoff success (or lack thereof) at this point of his career will always work against him. Luckily, he’s re-upped in Toronto for three more years after this one, effectively extending his window to collect the final infinity stone of a successful NHL career, the ever-so-treasured Stanley Cup.
Matthews and Mitch Marner will face off against each other on Thursday night for the 4 Nations Face-Off final between Team Canada and Team USA before the Leafs are back in action on Saturday against the Carolina Hurricanes.
Sponsored by bet365