It was a great way to start.
Auston Matthews, 19, made history on Oct. 12 by scoring four goals in his first game in the National Hockey League (NHL).
No one in the history of the NHL has ever done that before.
In fact, most players score fewer than 10 goals… in their entire career.
Only four other players have scored three goals (called a “hat trick”) in their first professional hockey game.
Matthews was snapped up by the Toronto Maple Leafs as the first pick in the “draft” this year. (A draft is one way hockey teams acquire their players.)
Matthews had his first goal in the game against the Ottawa Senators within the first eight minutes. He got his second goal six minutes later. He score his next two goals in the second period. (There are three periods in a hockey game.)
Back in 1917, when the NHL looked very different (it had different teams and different rules than it does now), two players scored five goals each in their debut games–but in terms of the “modern-day” NHL, Matthews stands alone.
The Leafs lost the game 5 to 4 for the Senators in overtime. Matthews blamed himself for making a mistake that caused the Senators’ winning goal.
It’s doubtful, however, that anyone is upset with him for that. In fact, he said it was a learning moment for him, and something he will “build on.”
Thank you to Gordon Enright for his assistance with this article.
Related links
*According to QuantHockey website.
http://www.quanthockey.com/TS/TS_GoalsPerGame.php
CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS
By Kathleen Tilly
Writing/Discussion Prompt
Auston Matthews was the first person to score four goals in his first game in the National Hockey League. This is a tremendous accomplishment for Matthews who is only 19 years old.
In your dreams, what would you like to be the first person to accomplish? Why would that achievement be special to you?
Reading Prompt: Making inferences/Interpreting texts
Now that Auston Matthews started his NHL career so successfully, everyone has very high expectations of him. He now has a lot of pressure to continue this success.
How do you think this makes him feel? What could he do to manage this pressure?
Primary
Make inferences about texts using stated and implied ideas from the texts as evidence (OME: Reading, 1.5).
Junior
Use stated and implied ideas in texts to make inferences and construct meaning (OME: Reading, 1.5).
Intermediate
Develop and explain interpretations of increasingly complex or difficult texts using stated and implied ideas from the texts to support their interpretations (OME: Reading, 1.5).
Language Feature: Less/fewer
When do you use the word fewer instead of less? Common advice is that you use the word fewer for things you can count, and you use the word less for things you don’t count. For example, you can count the number of glasses of water someone drinks, but you can’t count how much water is in a puddle. So you would use the word fewer for glasses of water – “I need to drink fewer glasses of water this afternoon so I am not so full”. And you would use the word less for water in a puddle – “There is less water in this puddle than in the bucket”.
Can you think of two sentences that use the words fewer and less?
