Berube Partially To Blame For Struggles of Maple Leafs Captain Auston Matthews

Former first-overall pick Auston Matthews has missed significant time this season dealing with injuries and admitted that the injury is lingering and is something he's going to have to manage throughout the season.

While many attribute his unknown injury to his lack of production, there appears to be another reason as to why his offensive production is the lowest of his career.

According to Natural Stat Trick, Craig Berube is deploying Matthews far less at five-on-five than Sheldon Keefe and even Mike Babcock did before him.

The 27-year-old is averaging his lowest amount of 5-on-5 ice-time (14:12) since his rookie season (14:09) to make up for his career-high in penalty kill time. In his most productive seasons, Matthews was averaging 1:30 to 2:00 more of 5-on-5 ice-time compared to this season.

While he has had his moments on the penalty kill, we saw Thursday night how ineffective he can be, allowing the Panthers to freely walk to the front of the net, giving Sam Bennett a tap-in to tie the game.

That was a prime example of how unproductive he has been on the penalty kill, but the stats are far worse. In particular, of 117 players that have played 75+ minutes on the penalty kill this season, Matthews ranked 111th in takeaways/60, which is far from ideal considering he has historically been one of the best in the game at stripping pucks in recent years.

Although Matthews has prided himself on being a great two-way player, Berube may have given him far too much responsibility on the penalty kill, forcing him to focus on something that is still outside of his comfort zone rather than doing what he does best - putting the puck in the net.

Hopefully the addition of Scott Laughton (once adjusted to his new environment) will allow Berube to cut back some of Matthews' minutes on the penalty kill and give him more opportunities to be deployed immediately after a penalty kill to generate more offence.