Toronto has been helped by solid coaching, but Matthews’s play has single-handedly made the Maple Leafs exciting to watch, a far cry from the morose franchise they were just a few years ago, marred by management which preferred to keep the money in their pocket by putting a cheap but mediocre team on ice if the tickets kept selling out. His exceptional play (as well as Mitch Marner’s) has brought the Leafs to the edge of respectability for the first time in a very long time. It would look downright reasonable on any other rookie in any other season, but Matthews deserves better because of one thing. That’s not a bad number for a 19-year-old rookie. This would have been a lot more controversial in October, as he was introduced to the game with a rating of 77, which was eventually upgraded to an 85 before finally settling at 86. Of course, this top 15 is to be taken with a very large grain of salt, as ratings are extremely subjective and, in the end, these players are all professionals who, should I ever step onto the ice to play against, would probably crush me into the board until my bones were nothing but a fine powder. The one advantage we have over our competitors however is that these ratings are, as far as we can confirm, adjusted to reflect the December roster update. We might be a bit late to the party, but bear in mind that we just launched this beautiful website and that the laws of time and space would have made it impossible for us to produce this at the start of the current NHL season like everyone else. It is with that in mind that we want to join the NHL 17 players ratings debate. It always ends up being about Sidney Crosby in the end. Those ratings are an endless source of somewhat good-natured, but always entertaining debates between bloggers and commenters alike, trying to argue why their franchise player deserves a better rating than Sidney Crosby. A big part of that experience is the players’ ratings, those mystical numbers which will determine if your favourite team is being portrayed accurately or if your rivals are being unfairly boosted. The hits, the dekes, the plays, everything is tweaked ever so slightly every year in the hope of making the game more and more true-to-life. A big part of the NHL 17 experience is that it strives to provide a simulation of the big league as close as possible to the real thing.
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