MONTREAL — Auston Matthews was awestruck in September.
Sitting in the fabled dressing room of the Montreal Canadiens, staring at the pictures of the team’s legends and Hall of Famers, he couldn’t help but drink in the atmosphere.
“It’s pretty unbelievable,” he said before slowly peeling off his equipment following Team North America’s practice that preceded its World Cup game against Team Europe.
Exactly one month later Matthews captured the imagination of the entire hockey world, scoring four goals against the Ottawa Senators in his NHL debut.
And now, a little more than a month after that special day, the wonderment that struck Matthews in Montreal’s room is morphing into something different.
Chalk it up to experience.
Saturday will mark his second Saturday-night game at the Bell Centre as Toronto’s franchise player. He’s already travelled a good portion of the NHL circuit, making stops in Winnipeg, Minnesota, Chicago, Brooklyn, Buffalo and Pittsburgh.
He’s played alongside some of the best players in the world and squared off against many of them, too.
It’s only natural that, like the majority of his fresh-faced Maple Leafs teammates, Matthews’ maturity is developing at an exponential rate.
His game is evolving, too.
“You gotta be a lot more aware out there, and each game it’s gotten better and better,” he said from the far-less-glamourous visitor’s room at the Bell Centre. “Playing without the puck — I think it’s been the biggest thing coming into this season that the coaching staff’s wanted to work with me on.
“I think it’s been getting a lot better and I feel much more comfortable out there.”
But nothing has come easy for the Arizona native who’s registered 12 points in 17 games this season.
In case you haven’t heard, Matthews comes into Saturday’s game against the 13-3-2 Canadiens having not scored a goal in 11 straight games. It’s the first major slump of his career.
But he flashed another sign of his maturity when asked about it.
“It’s hard not to think about it sometimes, but you just gotta go out there and play,” Matthews said. “I’m still creating chances, still out there playing — I feel like every game there’s little things that kind of go unseen that I think I’m improving on.
“So you just gotta keep working at it, gotta keep having fun; the chances are going to continue to come and you know one of these nights — hopefully tonight — they’re going to start going in.”
It’s a veteran response to a hard question, and perhaps that has something to do with the fact that he’s had to answer it several times over the last two weeks.
Leafs coach Mike Babcock appears to have grown a little tired of the scrutiny his star is facing on a daily basis.
“He’s an unbelievable umbrella,” said Babcock. “He’s making sure no rain gets on anybody else on the team because no one talks about anybody but him, so it’s perfect.”
It’s worth talking about what some of the other young players on this 8-6-3 team are getting accomplished on a nightly basis.
Mitch Marner, 19, has 10 points in his last seven games. Babcock singled out rookie Connor Brown as a player who’s impressed him of late. And young William Nylander was a player veteran Leafs forward James van Riemsdyk pointed to as one who really moves the needle every time he steps on the ice.
The hope in Toronto, which is higher than it’s been in years, is that Matthews and his young posse can keep building on their experience and help the team bust out of its funk on the road.
The Leafs are 1-4-3 away from the Air Canada Centre this season.
But playing against the Canadiens in Montreal is no longer a brand new thing for many players in Toronto’s room. And what was awe-inspiring at first is now becoming normal.
