Quote:
Originally Posted by theman23
Don’t see what’s so hard to understand. Matthews is basically the best paid player in the league if you take into account the structure of his contract, but he doesn’t lead the league in scoring and he is invisible in his own end. I’m not sure what he’s done to justify that contract.
Also, those of us who watched Matthews in his first two seasons do expect some level of defensive awareness and contribution. He actually looked like a pretty good defensive player before this year. Even if his focus is on scoring goals, that doesn’t give him a pass to stand around and watch while his team gets scored on.
Illl mention again that his PPG is trending down since his hot start. He had a crazy 1.6 PPG pace at the beginning of the season, and I suspect it’ll be closer to 1 ppg or less by the time the season ends.
|
I'm not giving him a pass on standing around when I said he's there to score goals than to play the hard defensive minutes. He obviously hasn't been himself but, you, unlike MLSE, can only speculate the reason why he hasn't been himself. You don't write off a young guy like him on a couple months of play after an injury. That's going against the odds. No one knows whether he will live up to the contract or not. That's the game played off the ice.