The Maple Leafs crushed the Lightning last night, defeating the two-year reigning Stanley Cup Champions 6-2. The story of the night though was about Auston Matthews scoring a hat-trick and tying the Leafs historical record for goals in a season at 54. Here’s our full recap of last night’s game:

Auston Matthews ties Leafs franchise goal record with hat trick against Lightning

It now seems inevitable that Matthews will hit 60 goals this season, the question now is when will he get there? There’s three games left this week, meaning scoring twice in each one would put him at 60 goals on Saturday at home against Montreal on Hockey Night in Canada, and wouldn’t that be nice?

Now, carrying that pace is a bit of a stretch—though at this point who knows what he could do—but it’s more likely this comes next week. A pace of one goal per game, which is about where he has been playing for weeks, would put goal #60 on Saturday April 16th, which is a game in Ottawa. Not quite as good as doing it at home in Toronto, but it’s still on HNIC, and you know that would be the hottest Senators ticket of the season among the large Leafs fan base in the Ottawa region. If he gets it one game earlier or later, that will be at home in Toronto either against the Capitals or Islanders.

What about after that? Getting goal #60 on that Saturday in Ottawa would still leave seven more games on the calendar to keep scoring past beyond 60 goals. At that same goal per game pace, he would hit 67 goals in the Leafs final game of the season, which would be one incredible achievement. 68 would even be better because that’s 34*2.

Only three days ago, we had a poll about whether or not he would get to 60 goals and some were skeptical of even that. So I decided I’ll run the same poll again, then we can compare the results. The poll is at the end of this post.

In the meantime, the Leafs wrap up their quick tour of the Sunshine State tonight with a game against the Florida Panthers, who are the division leaders. The Leafs beat them 5-2 in Toronto only one week ago, so the Panthers will probably be looking forward to the rematch on their home turf. We’ll have our preview of tonight’s game out this afternoon.

Let’s all watch those three goals from last night one more time.

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How many goals will Matthews have at the end of this season (another 13 games), take #2

He’ll get to exactly 6036
61-64268
65-69112
70+24
The number is so large it can only be described in exponential form.31
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