BUFFALO — Not a bad set of road bookends for Auston Matthews to highlight, at least partially for the Maple Leafs’ super rookie, the 2016-17 regular season.
Matthews became the most prolific rookie scorer in franchise history on Monday night when he recorded his 67th point in a 4-2 victory against the Buffalo Sabres at the KeyBank Center.
The point in the Leafs’ final road game came on Matthews’ 39th goal, breaking Peter Ihnacak’s team freshman record of 66 points, set in 1982-82.
A year before Ihnacak set the Leafs record, Neal Broten was doing something similar in 1981-82 in the National Hockey League as a whole when he scored 38 goals, the most by an American-born rookie.