SIMMONS: Record breaker Auston Matthews is not the greatest Leaf of all time

Now that he has the record, Auston Matthews may never be caught as the all-time leading goal scorer in Maple Leafs history.

But that won’t necessarily make him the greatest player in Leafs history.

Matthews stood at centre ice Tuesday night, the captain beside the captain of another era, the formal presentation being made from Mats Sundin to Matthews – the torch being officially passed from one giant of a hockey player to another giant – the current captain still needing to understand what others of years gone by have managed as Maple Leafs.

Most of the great Leafs of modern times were captains, but not all of them. Matthews has yet to capture the city in the subtle way in which crafty Dave Keon did in the 1960s. He hasn’t become a figure for the ages the way captain Darryl Sittler became in the 1970s. The 1990s began with Doug Gilmour doing crazy things as a Leaf, coming after Wendel Clark established himself in the 1980s as a Leaf captain who did almost everything and anything. Somewhere in all the years, there was Borje Salming, not a captain, who was so brilliant in his early years, so bored near the end of his time with the Leafs, and an argument could be made that at his absolute best, he was the most special Leaf of all.

And all that happened before the Leafs traded Clark and others for Sundin and others in one of the great one-sided trades in hockey history.

No one compares to Sundin

Sundin was like a straight line as a Leaf. He never had an off-season. Every year kind of looked like the year before it and the year after it. He played 13 years for the Leafs and led the team in scoring 12 times.

He didn’t just lead them in scoring.

He romped his way to club scoring titles, as no one has before him or since. One year, he scored 34 more points than anyone else on his team. Another time, 27. Twice he scored 22 more than anyone else wearing Leafs colours and twice he scored 21 more.

That’s six seasons of singularity when it came to scoring for Sundin. He didn’t score goals the way Matthews scores goals. But he was more powerful off the rush, more powerful with his snapshot, more powerful using his immense size.

No one in Leaf history has a body of work that compares to Sundin’s entirety and perhaps no one ever will.

Hard to define Matthews as captain

That may be the same with Matthews when it comes to goal scoring. He’s had a 69-goal season and a 60-goal season and no Leaf in history has been anywhere near those numbers. In between, he’s managed four 40-goal seasons and scored more goals from the day he entered the league to the day he moved two goals past Sundin.

Just what kind of captain is Matthews? He’s impossible to define at this point. Is he a natural leader? There’s been no indication of that. Is he a franchise-changing player? No indication of that either.

Statistically, yes, when it comes to goal scoring, he’s one of a kind, but not in any other way. Has any Leaf captain ever been more protected by management and media relations the way Matthews has – heaven forbid he do interviews two days in a row: Sundin didn’t miss a day in front of microphones in a decade and that’s a long time to go when you have next to nothing to say.

But like Sundin, Matthews has never had a special playoff season. And like Sundin, the Leafs haven’t had the kind of post-season success one might have expected from a player of this quality in the Matthews years. These were years to be Stanley Cup contenders: This is Season 10 for Matthews.

Can impossible become possible?

His Leafs have yet to contend for anything. The franchise has maybe a window of three more seasons to see if the impossible can become possible.

It never happened in the Sundin years. The impossible remained impossible. The Leafs got within a round twice of playing for the Cup twice in Sundin’s time, but realistically, they never got close once they made the Conference Finals.

One year, the Leafs didn’t show up for a playoff series against Buffalo, which was missing Dominik Hasek. And one year the Leafs lost to a Carolina team they never should have lost to – and in that playoff year Sundin was hurt, was brilliantly replaced by Alyn McCauley, and the team stopped executing once Sundin returned to the lineup later in the post-season.

At least, in a personal way, Sundin scored 70 playoff points in 77 playoff games with the Leafs. Those are more than respectable numbers.

Matthews has scored at a 52-goal pace for his entire career. His playoff scoring is at a 31-goal pace. In points alone, he’s scored at a 93-point pace in his 10 seasons: At playoff time, he’s a 71-point scorer.

That’s nowhere near what Gilmour or Clark or Sundin or Sittler accomplished and even in Keon’s case, at a different time, Keon scored at 61 61-point pace in the playoffs and 66 66-point pace in the regular season.

All these goals Matthews has scored have gotten him awards and rewards and a giant-sized salary, but he needs to be more than that. Does he yearn to be more than that? We don’t know.

Gilmour had two magical playoff seasons. So did Clark. So did Sittler. Keon had six or seven in a six-team league.

Matthews owns a record now that may be his forever. If nothing more comes from that, what will it mean at the end of the day?

ssimmons@postmedia.com