The Sky Isn’t Falling: Matthew Knies Will Silence Critics Soon

The Toronto Maple Leafs entered the year 2025 tied for first place in the Atlantic Division with the Florida Panthers, sharing an identical record and goal differential with the 2023-24 Stanley Cup champions. If you told yourself back in September that this is where the Leafs would be heading into 2025, you’d probably feel pretty good about the situation. Still, because the collective brains of the fanbase have been damaged by years of early playoff exits, there will always be something to stress about. Whether that’s issues with depth scoring, the health of the goaltending tandem, or most recently, a slump for sophomore forward Matthew Knies, you’ll always be reading about something that they need to do better in the news. Let’s focus on that last point, specifically because it’s actually a non-issue, despite what you might have read online.

Matthew Knies has had one of the most rapid ascensions of a Maple Leafs prospect in recent memory. It took one playoff game in 2022-23 for him to go from hopeful rookie to roster mainstay, and he brought more of that in his rookie season. He scored 15 goals and added 35 points in 80 games in 2023-24 and scored a big playoff goal for them, sealing the overtime-winner for them in Game 5 to keep their playoff hopes alive. He started off the 2024-25 season strong, with ten goals and 15 points in 22 games through the first two months of the season, but things have dried up for him since then, with only one goal and four points in 14 games.

Having your offensive production dip is one thing, but the concerning part about this slump is that Knies has self-admittedly lost the physical edge to his game that’s made him so hard to play against early in his career. He suffered a concussion on November 20 against the Vegas Golden Knights, and since then, he hasn’t seemed fully comfortable on the ice. It’s not that he’s scared to get hit or anything to that effect, but as a 22-year-old second-year player in the NHL coming back from a mid-season injury for one of the first times, it’s not always going to be a seamless transition back to the bigs. And Knies knows it.

“My game has dipped,” Knies told The Athletic’s Joshua Kloke in a New Year’s Eve piece. “You have to find energy in different ways, little things that get you out of bed in the morning and excited to come to the rink.”

Knies’ bread and butter is combining physicality with goal-scoring touch the same way that players like Brady Tkachuk and Tom Wilson do. He knows that getting his game back to where it can be starts with honouring the former. From there, the goals will come back.

“I think I just need to mentally dial in on the little things that I’ve been lacking.”

The 6-foot-3, 227-pound winger scored what would have been a much-needed goal on Tuesday afternoon against the New York Islanders, but it was called back due to goaltender interference. The goal itself was a prime example of what Knies needs to do to get his game back and serves as a positive sign that he’s on his way to achieving that.

Everything about that goal, the driving of the net and the hunting for rebounds embodies Knies’ strengths as a hockey player. Head coach Craig Berube told The Athletic in the same piece that more of that net-driving mentality is what he needs to get his confidence back.

“His game just needs to be a bit more reckless,” Berube said, “He’s a big-bodied guy who can skate extremely well and is heavy. He just has to get reckless a little bit in his game and just get more involved. Skating and getting in on the fore check, moving all the time, getting to the net, winning the battles. He was so good at that before the injury, and he just hasn’t gotten to that level again.”

The fact of the matter is that there’s no need to panic over Knies’ slow couple of games. You can’t even really call it a sophomore slump because it’s just been a not-great month more than anything. He only needs four goals to meet his total from last season, and he’s still on pace to finish somewhere between 40-50 points this year. Ideally, he gets back to the level of production they got from him in October and November, but in reality, the pace he’s on right now is right in line with where you would expect a second-round pick from 2021 to be. Besides, he’s established himself with an early reputation for scoring goals and elevating his game in the playoffs, and if he can do that again this season, nobody will care about the 14 games in December he struggled to put points on the board.