The Toronto Maple Leafs are a rebuilding team, and as such, have a bunch of shiny, young, new players. Really talented ones, too, for which we are all thankful.
They’re the ones doing all of the scoring, too!
Or at least, they were until 13:13 into their second game, during which James van Riemsdyk scored his first goal of the season. JvR is 27 years old and has played over 400 NHL games, so he is very much not a rookie.
He’s the one who broke the streak. Before he got his first, it was Leafs rookies, and only Leafs rookies doing the scoring, from Auston Matthews to Connor Brown to Mitch Marner getting his first.
Turns out, it’s not exactly common to have rookies score your first six goals of the season. Via Elias Sports Bureau, Inc.:
The Leafs are the first NHL team in the expansion era (since 1967-68) whose first six goals of a season were notched by rookies. The previous high was four goals by the 1984-85 Pittsburgh Penguins, with Mario Lemieux, Warren Young (two) and Doug Bodger accounting for those goals.
Matthews and Marner, who are both 19 years old, are the first pair of teenagers to score goals in the same season for the Maple Leafs since Vincent Damphousse and Luke Richardson did so in 1987-88.
Those are some pretty cool names to put the Leafs’ kids in company with. And remember, Matthews had the coolest debut of them all, while Marner got to fulfil a childhood dream in the most epic way possible.
Times are pretty great for the kids on the Leafs.