The Toronto Maple Leafs and their star players tend to face some extra heat when things go wrong in the playoffs, or even in the regular season, for that matter. The reality is, when you play in a market like Toronto, where you’ve got a well-populated fanbase mixed with a lack of success in half a century, the microscope is always going to zoom in a little further. For someone like Auston Matthews, who’s the highest-paid player on the team and now has the responsibility of team captain on top of everything, your negatives will always get more attention than your positives, especially if you have an early playoff exit.

Former Maple Leafs assistant coach Lane Lambert, who is currently the head coach of the Seattle Kraken, spoke to TSN’s Mark Masters about his time in Toronto after he left and said that Matthews’ team-first attitude impressed him while he was on the bench. Below is one of Lambert’s quotes from the interview that made it into our article, which was one of our site’s best-performing pieces in 2025.

“There’s a lot of things that impressed me about him, but I was most impressed with his team-first attitude and the fact that he plays a 200-foot game,” Lambert said. “I think he unfairly doesn’t get considered in certain defensive categories or defensive awards in the National Hockey League. I just think that, as we go forward here, he’s going to get more and more recognition. Very responsible.”

While the heat is turned up higher than ever on Matthews right now, who has missed time with injuries and has produced well below his average clip when he’s been healthy, it’s important to remember that what we see on TV only takes us so far.