Matt Martin played alongside Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner during their first two seasons in the NHL.
What he quickly came to realize about the two talented players at the forefront of the Maple Leafs: “They’re two very different personalities,” Martin said in an interview last spring.
“When people would ask me about the two of them, I’m like, ‘Mitchy’s your fun-loving, always happy, always wanting to be around, always a smile on his smile, just loves to play the game, loves to be a part of it, loves to be with the guys.’
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“And Matthews,” he added, “is just power-hungry. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. Like, if he scores a goal, he smells blood and he’s coming for three or four. That’s just kinda who he is. He’s just got a completely different demeanour than Mitchy. And I think those two personalities really play well off each other, especially when you think about where Matthews is the elite goalscorer and Mitchy is the elite playmaker. So you have the fun-loving personality playmaker and the elite goalscorer who kinda has that eat-your-heart-out mentality.”
Matthews and Marner are both 25 and often linked as the Leafs’ two best players — both All Stars in 2023 (Matthews was unable to attend because of injury.) But as Martin and other current and former teammates have observed, they couldn’t be more different as people.
The ‘bubbly’ one
Chatty, energetic, and a social butterfly who wants to be involved in everything. That’s Marner.
“He thinks it’s crazy we’re not going for lunch today,” Morgan Rielly said. “I can’t (do lunch today). He thinks that’s bananas.”
Marner is outgoing that way.
After he took his splashy All-Star weekend skates for a spin at practice last week, Marner excitedly showed them off to teammates. “Mark-o!” he yelled across the dressing room to veteran Mark Giordano. “Come see these things.”
Moments later, Marner pulled David Kämpf in to have a look.
“He wants to know what everybody is doing,” Rielly said. “He wants to make jokes about everybody, have everybody make jokes about him, and be very involved.”
James van Riemsdyk, another former teammate, put it this way: “Mitch is a bubbly person in general and I don’t think a lot of people would describe Auston that way, from the outside looking in.”
“(Mitch) is almost like your little brother drinking sodas, eating candies,” van Riemsdyk said.
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“Mitch is just very energetic,” Rielly added. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a trainer or a coach or a player, if they’re wearing a bad pair of shoes he’s gonna say something. He feels the need to poke and prod and be involved in the conversation and be involved in the joke.”
Marner leads with his energy. He’s one of the loudest voices in the Leafs’ dressing room.
“You can always hear him chirping back and forth,” Alex Kerfoot said. “He’s just got that youthful, exuberant personality that kinda draws guys in and makes it fun to be around him. He almost has that attitude of a young kid that would do anything — nothing’s really gonna make his day any worse. He’s feeling good and you can see that with the way that he plays on the ice. He just has so much confidence in himself. He’s always having a good time.”
Marner stands by the door to the Leafs dressing room just before they hit the ice for games, giving each and every teammate a pound and word of encouragement. With many, including Matthews, there are even special handshakes.
That outgoing demeanour tends to make its way onto the ice.
Martin and Marner became close pals during Martin’s brief stint in Toronto. Martin once memorably played alongside both Matthews and Marner for a game or two during the Mike Babcock era. Marner will “talk to you and tell you things” on the bench, Martin said.
“The special thing about him is he tries to use your strengths to his advantage, if that makes sense,” Martin explained. “So, he would say, ‘If I have no play, I’m (putting the puck) in your corner and I’m coming and I’m following you up.’ So I would go in and I would hit somebody and then just tap the puck back to him. So he was using your strengths to the advantage of the line.
“And then he’s not just gonna go out there and try to do it all by himself. He wants to get everybody involved.”
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Marner’s playmaking talents, Martin said, were fueled by his hockey smarts. “It’s almost like he’s playing a video game,” Martin said.
The ‘laidback’ one
And while, as Rielly observed it, “Mitch kinda operates up here, just at a high frequency,” Matthews was far more laid-back. “He kinda takes it as it goes, he goes with the flow a little bit more,” Rielly said.
Don’t underestimate that Arizona cool, teammates say.
“He definitely knows how good he is – and we all know how good he is,” Michael Bunting said. “He’s not the type of guy that would go around flaunting it. He has that calm, cool (demeanour) about him.”
“And nothing affects what he does day in and day out,” Kerfoot added. “He just tunes it all out and goes about his business and is extremely focused on being the best possible player that he can be.”
Martin said he was struck by that in Matthews’ very first NHL game, when he made history by scoring four goals.
“Most guys would be jumping around,” Martin said. “And he was just – he expected to do it. It wasn’t surprising to him. He wasn’t going crazy on his celebrations.”
Martin said that game, back on Oct. 12 2016, was “one of the more impressive things” he had ever been a part of. “He just buries four and it just seemed like another day’s work for him. In a lot of ways, we were like, ‘Oh my God,’ and he was just like, ‘What’d I do?’”
Martin described Matthews as something like a shark when it came to goal-scoring.
“There was moments in games where he scores a goal and it ends a slump – and a slump for him is like three games or two games, not like my kind of slump – and then you just see this switch goes off,” Martin said. “And then the next shift he’s coming and he gets another big scoring chance, and then it just seems like he’s coming and coming and coming and coming. It’s like as soon as that opportunity presents itself and he starts to feel it, it’s like, good luck stopping him.”
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Matthews stepped into the NHL at 19, but seemed a lot older than that from Martin’s standpoint.
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“He had leadership qualities the first day he stepped in that locker room,” Martin said. “As a fourth line guy and somebody that plays a completely different game from him, he just always appreciated what I think everybody brought to the table.”
Matthews was first to celebrate a teammate for blocking a shot, for instance. He made it known just how much he appreciated the job of each individual.
Zach Aston-Reese made note recently of Matthews’ encouragement that way.
“When one of your best players, or in this case, the best player on the team, is recognizing the things that other guys bring to the table, that’s the type of stuff that just brings a team closer and closer together.
“It’s maturity. Some guys, it takes a while for them to grow into their skin, to be comfortable being vocal and talking to some veteran players.”
Matthews and Marner both share a fondness for their dogs — Felix for Matthews, Zeus for Marner. Both enjoy hip-hop (Marner also has a fondness for country) and along with Bunting, devoured the Netflix show “You” last summer.
“They have a lot in common obviously with their games,” Rielly said. “They’re both extremely talented. They both like certain things. But ultimately, their personalities are a little bit different.”
(Top photo: Mark Blinch / NHLI via Getty Images)
