Marc Crawford knew Auston Matthews was going to be special from the moment he saw him: Leafs Morning Take

Auston Matthews needs two goals over the final three regular season contests to become the first NHL player to hit the 70 goal plateau in 31 years.

Oh, and the Leafs lost a barnburner against New Jersey on Thursday night at Scotiabank Arena.

There’s that, too.

Carter Hutton filled in for Jay Rosehill on the Friday edition of Leafs Morning Take. We kicked off the show by touching on Toronto’s classy tribute to Rodion Amirov with his family in the building. The 2020 first round pick passed away last August at the age of 21 due to brain cancer. Pure class from the organization putting that together.

After that, we hit on Max Domi’s awesome response to Simon Nemec after the Devils rookie tried to rough up Auston Matthews a little. It took a while but Domi’s really starting to live up to his name in this market. On top of that, he’s been producing like crazy and has forged a great chemistry on the top line with Matthews and Tyler Bertuzzi.

Presented by DoorDash, the Appetizer focused on everything surrounding the 6-5 loss to New Jersey. As mentioned, Matthews is up to 68 goals. There’s not much else to say about his greatness —at this point. The majority of the conversation in the segment stemmed around Ilya Samsonov. The Russian netminder had a rare off night allowing six goals on 20 shots. Additionally, we talked about John Tavares’ two goal night, William Nylander’s eight game goalless drought, and Joel Edmundson’s return to the lineup. Also, the PK stunk. This is a recording.

After that, brought to you by Douglas, we caught up with Marc Crawford, who’s once again in Switzerland coaching the Zurich Lions these days. The 63-year-old, who coached Matthews in his draft year, offered a unique perspective because of his relationship/history with Papi. It was a fun conversation!

Lastly, courtesy the Wendy’s Daily Faceoff Survivor, we previewed Toronto’s final regular season home game of the year. The Red Wings, who are fighting for their playoff lives, will be in town on Saturday night. Another big night for Joseph Woll.

You can subscribe to TheLeafsNation (TLN) YouTube page HERE. Additionally, check us out in podcast form wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure to leave us a 5-star review!