TORONTO – The grey started to descend on the city in the afternoon, swirling around Toronto’s iconic CN Tower and hiding parts of the skyline until nighttime took over.
By then, the streets were covered in snow. Traffic crawled. Those brave enough to walk were bundled in scarves and oversized coats. The scene was so typical of winter in Canada it might as well have been on a postcard.
But inside Air Canada Centre, another symbol of the Great White North, a team from the desert and its most prolific product were the show.
Scottsdale’s Auston Matthews faced off against the Coyotes for the first time in his young NHL career Thursday, a matchup that maybe never would have happened if the franchise didn’t relocate to the Valley one year before Matthews was born.