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Instant Reaction: The Auston Matthews show propels Maple Leafs to 6-5 win over Jets

Auston Matthews has been under the microscope for the Toronto Maple Leafs all season, and not in a good way. The New Years Day bout between the Maple Leafs and the Winnipeg Jets might have been the game that turns things around for him.

Whenever the Leafs and Jets play, there’s a decent chance it will be a barn burner. The two teams have been softly linked ever since the Matthews/Patrik Laine draft, and while that’s about as far in the rearview mirror as you can get, they formed a bit of a rivalry when they shared a division in the one-off North Division season in 2020-21 and since then, you can find more entertaining games between the two teams than not.

Anyway, back to Thursday night’s game and what Matthews did. On paper, he scored a hat trick and added an assist to give him his first hat trick of the season and his first real burst of life in 2025-26. He entered the game with 15 goals and 27 points in 33 games, which aren’t bad totals but well below the standard he’s set for himself. He exits the game with 18 goals and 31 points in 34 games, and a level of confidence that can hopefully be used as a building block on what’s been a tough season for both him and the team.

Matthews’ goals featured some variety, with a deflection for the first one, a last-second wrister to close out the second period, and a deke around Eric Comrie following a puck recovery by Easton Cowan for the third. Matthews is scoring goals of all types when he’s at his best, and he looked closer to the 69-goal version of himself in this game than he did all of 2024-25.

It was a bad start for Woll, who allowed four goals on 18 shots and got pulled in favour of Dennis Hildeby, but the Leafs recognized that their team play wasn’t the reason they were down and banned together to pick up their goaltender. Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Matias Maccelli, and Troy Stecher added the goals around Matthews.

The Leafs may have yet to win more than three games in a row, and even with this win, it’s only two win in a row, but you can say from watching them lately that the process is much better and has been consistently good since the win over the Penguins right before Christmas. Their next opportunity to keep the momentum going will come Saturday night against the New York Islanders.

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Source: https://theleafsnation.com/news/instant-reaction-auston-matthews-show-toronto-maple-leafs-win-jets