Toronto Maple Leafs: Auston Matthews May Not Be Captain and It’s OK

by Matthew Rodrigopulle

The Toronto Maple Leafs have been hinting at naming a captain for a while, but with the events that transpired this week, things have gotten complicated.

Speculation about the Toronto Maple Leafs captaincy has been the biggest topic this month. All fingers have been pointing to either Auston Matthews, Morgan Rielly or John Tavares earning the honour. However, out of these threes, it seemed like Matthews was the one most likely to be deemed captain of the team.

Fans have even went so far as to notice a light imprint of a C on the his jersey in a promotional video on Instagram. Toronto Maple Leafs Captaincy

Although everything seemed to be set for Matthews to be named captain, nothing’s ever that easy in Leafs Nation. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, Matthews’ disorderly conduct charge from May came to light on Tuesday.

At first, people still thought that this wouldn’t effect his chances at the captaincy, including teammates like Tavares and Rielly. However, new information has continued to come out, which ultimately has not made the case any better for Matthews.

Now while this was all going on these past two days, a big question that was looming around was whether or not the Maple Leafs knew about this situation, for how long if so and whether or not they tried to bury it.

On Wednesday, it was revealed that the Leafs found out at the same time as everyone else. Matthews did not inform the team of the incident or the charge and I think it’s safe to say, this doesn’t help his case to be captain.

Now I’m not going to make the call here about whether Matthews should or shouldn’t get the C. But I do want to make one thing clear for Leafs Nation: the Toronto Maple Leafs are in good hands either way.

It seems as though so many people have been so caught up in their hopes that Matthews would be captain, that this situation has been ruined a lot. But let’s say this does end the chances of Matthews being captain, I want to remind everyone that the Leafs still have two ideal candidates in John Tavares and Morgan Rielly.

John Tavares captained the New York Islanders for nearly five years. He has been great with the fans and the media and he’s the first-overall superstar that everyone still dreams about leading a team. Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun claims Kyle Dubas and “probably” Mike Babcock wanted Tavares to be captain all along. Whether this is true or not, Tavares is the veteran guy that can lead a team effectively, as he has when he stepped in to this team’s locker room last year.

If home-grown talent is what you want, Rielly is the longest-serving Leaf after being drafted in 2012 and again, is great with media and fans, calm and collected and known to be a great leader. He’s also a really good defenceman, who put up 72 points last season alone.

Auston Matthews is the face of the franchise, so it’s understandable why it would be great if he was named captain. But even if he’s not named captain, the Leafs are still going to be a really, really good hockey team. I think it’s been very easy to forget recently that Auston Matthews was just one candidate for the role–he wasn’t always the only one.

Although I would love to see Matthews as the captain of the team, I really think Tavares or Rielly would be just as good of a leader and face of the team. The point is, no matter who they end up choosing, the Toronto Maple Leafs will be in good hands moving forward. So don’t sweat, we’ll let this all play out.