Kyle Palmieri And Auston Matthews Are Both On Pace To Score Over 100 Goals This Season. Who's Gonna Do It?
A couple of things here to start off. 1) This satisfies 2 separate requirements of my day which are to blog about Auston Matthews daily until his multi-point streak comes to an end, and to blog about the equally ridiculous start to the season that Kyle Palmieri has had. And 2) Quick shoutout to USA Hockey. Two of the biggest weapons in the league this year are a couple of good ol’ boys from the US of A. Not a big deal or anything.
But yeah. As we all know by now, Auston Matthews has played in 6 games so far this season and has had at least 2 points in each of those 6 games. He currently has 10 goals and 14 points on the season. At this point in his career, I think Auston Matthews has reached superstar status where people who don’t even follow hockey at least know is name. So everybody has had their eyes on Auston so far this season but if you head back over the border into the States and take a trip on over to Newark, NJ, you’ll find a guy who has also been assassinating goalies at an alarming rate, but he just doesn’t have the same name recognition as AM34. That may not last long, however, because through 3 games this season, Kyle Palmieri has scored 6 goals. And he’s only the 4th player in league history to score 2 goals in each of his first 3 games to start the season. Here are his 2 from last night’s 3-2 win over San Jose.
The Devils already put up 14 goals in 3 games so far this year. They beat Edmonton 5-2 over in Sweden to start off the year. Then they blanked the Caps 6-0 in game #2. And then finally had a close one last night against San Jose. 14 goals for New Jersey and 6 of them are coming from Kyle Palmieri. That’s more goals than the Oilers have total in 3 games (5) and the Coyotes have total in 4 games (2).
So now Auston Matthews has 10 goals in 6 games. That has him on pace to put up around 136 this year. Kyle Palmieri has 6 goals in 3 games. That has him on pace to score 164 this year. The world has never seen anybody score 100 goals in an NHL season before. Is there a chance that we see two of them happen this season? Probably not. Actually–almost definitely not. At some point teams/goalies will start to catch up and the numbers will start to slow down a little. But you know what? Fuck it. It’s Monday morning, you probably still feel like shit from the weekend, you probably lost a bunch of money over the past few days and now you’re stuck at work wishing you were dead. So let’s just pretend like one of these guys are going to keep scoring at the rate they are currently lighting the heckin’ lamps at.
Who are you taking to be the first NHL player to ever score 100 goals in a season? I feel like a lot of the money would be put on Auston and for good reason. He’s a top 10 player in the league and the Leafs are going to score about a billion goals this season. You have to imagine that at least 100 of those would come from Matthews. But even though Kyle Palmieri may not be as big of a name as Matthews, I think you really have to consider him being the guy here and it all comes down to linemates. Do I think that Auston Matthews is the better player here 1v1 against Palmieri? Yes I do. But would I take being on a line with Taylor Hall and Nico Hischier over Patrick Marleau and Kasperi Kapanen? Not in a landslide or anything but that’s the reigning Hart Trophy winner and 1st overall pick in 2017. So yes, yes I would much rather be on Kyle Palmieri’s line. And that’s where I think Palmieri is better set up to be the first guy to score one hundo. He can snipe away on the powerplay and then when he’s out there 5v5? All he needs to do is get his ass to the front of the net and the puck will find his stick before it ends up behind the goalie.
Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.