Haksal’s Genji and Auston Matthews’ NHL Debut
By: Fredrik Salomonsson
Tags: Esports, Overwatch, Hockey

Haksal’s Genji and Auston Matthews’ NHL Debut

I am from Sweden and in Sweden we care about three things: coffee, not talking to strangers, and ice hockey. When October comes around, the most hardcore Swedes stay up late, make sure the coffee’s ready and then watch NHL games. Alone.

One game that hockey fans pay extra attention to is the debut of the guy who was selected first in the NHL entry draft the previous summer. In this case that guy was Auston Matthews. Matthews was born in California but grew up in Scottsdale, Arizona. How a kid growing up in the desert turned out to be one of the most talented hockey players in modern times beats me. But that’s not the point.

Last night was his NHL debut for the Toronto Maple Leafs. They’re not a good team by any stretch of the imagination but their fans are among the most passionate in the world. Playing for Toronto puts a lot of pressure on a young player. Luckily for Matthews his debut was an away game against the Ottawa Senators. I have never played in the NHL so it’s impossible for me to say what it feels like but I can imagine it’s easier to stay composed in a packed arena where everyone wants you to fail miserably than in an equally crowded Air Canada Centre where everyone expects you to be the savior that’s going to take their beloved team to the Stanley Cup playoffs.

A little over eight minutes into the game Auston Matthews found the back of the net and had scored his first NHL goal. From that point onwards he was on fire. Less than two minutes into the second period he had completed a hat trick. Only four other players have scored three goals in their NHL debut: Alex Smart (1943), Real Cloutier (1979), Fabian Brunnström (2008) and Derek Stepan (2010). Remember Fabian Brunnström. I’ll get back to him later.

Anyway. Back to the game. We’re still in the second period. William Nylander transports the puck into the Senators’ zone and passes it across the crease to — you guessed it — Auston Matthews who scored his fourth(!) NHL goal. The list of players who have scored four goals in their debut is shorter. A lot shorter. Auston Matthews is the only name on that list.

After the game and my third cup of coffee I remembered that Korean Overwatch player I had watched the other day: Kim Hyo Jong, better known as Haksal. It was in the Overwatch Apex tournament and also his debut on stage and against a Western team. His team RunAway was up against REUNITED, a powerhouse of a team tearing apart the Overwatch scene in Europe up until recently. Don’t get me wrong; they’re still really good but admittedly they’ve fallen off a bit lately.

Going into the game I expected it to be a walk in the park for the European side. That was of course before I had even heard the name Haksal. Traditionally westerners are better than Asians at FPS-games. Overwatch however is a bit different in the way that it’s more about managing cooldowns and combining ultimate abilities than having raw aim. Given the little I know about League of Legends I’d say Koreans are pretty good at coordinating team fights so I don’t actually know why I was so surprised when RunAway turned out to be pretty good.

Even though RunAway showed us some solid team play, this match will go down in history for an entirely different reason. Haksal picked Genji — the half-human, half-omnic ninja who came to peace with his past and his new form of existence by spending years in the mountains of Nepal with omnic monks.

Genji might be the hero with the highest skill ceiling in the entire game. His insane movement abilities, two fire modes, ability to deflect projectiles and his Dragon Blade ultimate is a true challenge even for the most seasoned of FPS-players. Basically, if you can master Genji you are mechanically skilled enough to learn any other hero.

Because Overwatch doesn’t have statistics in the same way as hockey does we can’t count goals. What we can count however is the number of consecutive maps in which Haksal destroyed REUNITED and carried his team to victory. In this case three but that’s only because it was a best of five match. Given the opportunity I’m sure he’d join Auston Matthews on the list of players who have scored four “goals” in their debut.

If you haven’t seen what he did to REUNITED yet I recommend that you do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5LdPF-vbew

Remember Fabian Brunnström? One of the few players who have scored a hat trick in his NHL debut? His story is completely different from Auston Matthews’. Brunnström never got drafted but he had a solid season in the Swedish Elite League in 2006–2007 which resulted in the Dallas Stars signing him as an unrestricted free agent. That’s far from being in the spotlight. When he took the ice after being a healthy scratch in the first two games of the season, no one knew who he was. Nor did they really care. Unless they were hardcore Stars fans of course.

He scored three goals (the first European to do so) including the game-winner against the Nashville Predators and all of a sudden he was the talk of the town. It turned out to be a one-off and slowly but surely he slipped back into obscurity. In 2012 he returned to Sweden and is still to this day a decent hockey player, albeit far from the top.

Auston Matthews on the other hand has been rigorously scouted for years and he keeps exceeding expectations. It’s a fairly safe bet to say that he’s going to be a really good player in the NHL for years to come. Maybe not a superstar, but a good player. At least.

I can’t help but wonder whether Haksal will turn out to be an Auston Matthews or a Fabian Brunnström. The way he dominated the match against REUNITED was something I’ve never seen before against a top level team. It was filthy. I’m gonna go with Matthews.

Fredrik Salomonsson