Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner named to NHL’s All-Rookie team

While the dream would’ve been to get all three of the Leafs’ young guns on there, in the words of Meat Loaf, two out of three ain’t bad.

Shortly after it was announced Auston Matthews had won the Calder Trophy, news broke that he, alongside Mitch Marner, had been named to the NHL’s all-rookie team in one of its deepest classes of all time.

Matthews, as you know, scored 40 goals (and then four in four straight playoff games) while adding 29 assists to lead all rookies in scoring, while Marner did his thing hitting totals of 19 goals and a Leafs’ rookie record of 42 assists.

They were joined by Patrik Laine, Zach Werenski, Brady Skjei, and Matt Murray. No real surprises there.

While this’ll add a layer to the really unnecessary Marner vs. Nylander debate, it easily could’ve gone the other way, as the blonde-haired messiah also scored 61 points, albeit in four more games than young jorts-wearing Mitchell.

Apologies to Dylan Fremlin. He really wanted William Nylander to have this one. Apologies to the Brown, Hyman, Gauthier, and Zaitsev families as well, but idk if they really had a shot at making this stacked team.

Just for a fun thought exercise, if this were the first unit of an otherwise average NHL team, where would they finish in the league? Top 5? Presidents’ Trophy winners?