So honestly after watching the Austin Matthews debut, just one thing needs to be said his performance on the night.
Now true, while at the end of the sixty minutes and a bit of OT for the 2016-17 debut for the Leafs and Senators the scoreline was Senators 5, Matthews 4, remainder of Leafs 0, the hype surrounding the young Arizonan making his regular season debut seems rather justified.
The young phenom from Scottsdale, Arizona had a fine night of skating on the ice surface at the Canadian Tire Centre, dazzling the Ottawa fans and undressing the Ottawa defenders as he provided for a performance to launch the new season for the NHL.
Bringing to the ice a performance that guaranteed top line exposure on all of the nightly sports highlights shows, even ESPN, which for the most part in the past has placed the NHL's scoring crawl in the same line up as Cricket Test matches from Fiji.
Matthews' rewarded the Leafs confidence of Draft Day in June, picking up his first NHL goal at 8:21 of the first period, followed by his second just six minutes later. With a short break between periods, possibly to check his twitter feed and instagram account, he came back out and became the thing of nightmares for Senators goaltender Craig Anderson.
With Matthews scoring just after the one minute mark of period number two, collecting his fourth and final goal on the evening with but three seconds remaining in the middle period, a full night of hockey already accomplished with just forty minutes of play out of the way.
With a modern day NHL record in Matthews pocket, that of four goals in his first game, the Maple Leafs night on score sheet would come to an end, as the Senators finally found a way to not only shut down the highly touted addition to the Leafs lineup, but to turn the game around and claim the win in Overtime.
Perhaps a perfect outcome for hockey fans in the Nations' capital who can say they were there when Matthews' collected the first of what appear to be many records that may soon claim his name, while at the same time having seen the home side squad show some grit and take their first victory of the season.
The scoring exploits became one of the trending topics on twitter for part of the evening and no doubt set Leafs' fans hearts to racing at the prospect of a home game schedule that suggests offence may soon be back in the blue print for Maple Leaf hockey.
The only person perhaps that was happier than Maple Leafs fans on Wednesday night was League Commissioner Gary Bettman, it was like winning your Fantasy Hockey Draft on the first night of play.
Bettman has a top level American star, playing for one of the most iconic franchises in the league, one based in Canada, in the home of the top television market for the NHL, a guarantee that the launch of the legend of Auston is going to get maximum exposure.
As an added chance for a short victory lap, the newest star for the NHL hails not from a snowbound town in the hockey belt, but from that newly charted territory of Arizona. A market that Bettman has done all that he could to keep alive and with the ascent of Matthews to the NHL galaxy he no doubt make for at least a short term salute to building footprints across the continent.
At some point the Commish might prefer to see young Mr. Matthews on a US based team in one of the large media markets of the lower 48, but for now the spotlight is Toronto and Matthews it seems is going to fit in just nicely.
Sometimes you just have a great day and Wednesday was that for Matthews, Bettman, the Leafs and hockey fans as well.
The Reviews quickly came in following Matthew's debut and for fans of the Leafs, the omens would appear to indicate that alls is going to be fine.
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