Auston Matthews the first real byproduct of Coyotes community to crack NHL
TORONTO — Back when Daniel Briere was putting up 283 points over 364 games as a dynamo centre for the Phoenix Coyotes, a young boy named Auston Matthews was one of his biggest fans.
Today the 19-year-old Matthews, who was born the year after the former Winnipeg Jets landed in the desert and were relaunched as the Coyotes, is the first real byproduct of the sun-splashed hockey community to make the NHL.
His childhood was not the hockey life of a kid growing up in Ontario or Alberta, but Matthews, the Toronto Maple Leafs’ emerging centre, said it wasn’t far off either.
“I was still waking up at six in the morning, but it was about 65 (Fahrenheit) and sunny outside. I was walking outside in shorts and flip-flops,” Matthews said after practice on Wednesday afternoon. “To me it was just normal growing up there.”