mcgran

He shoots, he scores! From Arizona to Toronto, the definitive unauthorized biography of hockey’s hottest sniper, Auston Matthews.

For those growing up in the American southwest, playing football, basketball, and baseball are the stuff of childhood dreams. For Auston Matthews, however, the unlikeliest of desert sports--ice hockey--captured his imagination. From the first time he watched professional players when he could barely stand up on skates himself, he was completely mesmerized by the speed and action on the ice. No one could have predicted his unorthodox journey to the NHL, from Arizona to Switzerland to Toronto.

The first pick in the 2016 NHL entry draft, Matthews is quite simply a scoring phenom. It’s almost as if he can’t not score. In his first NHL game he scored a record four goals against the Leafs’ mortal enemies, the Ottawa Senators. He’s been scoring at a torrid pace ever since, breaking records as he blasts pucks past startled goalies. The red light has become his good friend, a beacon to the success of one of the most prolific scorers in the history of the league. What he wants more than any scoring record, however, is a championship win, something all Leafs’ fans have pleaded for since their last Stanley Cup win in 1967.

Veteran sports reporter Kevin McGran, who covers the Leafs for TheToronto Star, talks to Matthews just about every day in the dressing room and at practices. McGran has spoken to dozens of Matthews’s coaches, rivals, friends, teammates, and others in Auston Matthews, the first book about the sometimes enigmatic star of hockey’s most storied franchise.

Kevin McGran is a sports reporter, covering the Toronto Maple Leafs and the National Hockey League for TheToronto Star.