Auston Matthews’ absence from the Toronto Maple Leafs will continue for at least another game.
Matthews did not practice on Friday morning and will miss his sixth straight game when the Leafs host Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday.
It’ll be the longest stretch the Leafs have been without Matthews since he missed 14 consecutive games with a shoulder injury during his third NHL season.
“We want to get him 100 percent,” head coach Craig Berube said Friday. “We want to get him behind this, so he can move forward and we can move forward.”
Matthews has skated only two times since the Leafs first revealed he was dealing with an upper-body injury, the last of which came on Sunday. He hasn’t skated since, Berube confirmed, and hasn’t played or practiced with the Leafs since a Nov. 3 overtime loss in Minnesota.
“Would I like him back? Yeah, for sure,” Berube said. “But it is what it is. We just gotta keep moving on without him right now.”
The Leafs haven’t revealed the nature of the injury, only that Matthews is “day to day.”
He will end up missing more than two weeks, at the very least, with a chance to play next on Wednesday when the Leafs host the Vegas Golden Knights.
Matthews’ continued absence from the ice, however, makes it conceivable that his absence stretches on even a little longer – to the following Sunday when the Leafs host the Utah Hockey Club.
“No setbacks,” Berube said of Matthews’ status. “We’ve got two games in a long stretch of time. So we’re letting him recover.”
The biggest source of optimism around Matthews is the belief that he’ll be able to get over the issue entirely by taking the time needed to rest and recover now. The injury first popped up during training camp, forcing him to miss two practices, and then became something he managed during the first 13 games of the regular season.
In his first season as team captain, he did what he could to play through it.
The Leafs were still winning his minutes, and Matthews had become an effective first-unit penalty killer. But his typically elite production, the goal-scoring especially, wasn’t there. His hits and takeaways were both down considerably, an indication that he wasn’t right physically.
The decision to back Matthews off was made after he logged more than 42 minutes of ice time during back-to-back games at St. Louis and Minnesota on Nov. 2 and 3. With the team in the middle of a hectic stretch of schedule, it was deemed most prudent for him to get back to 100 percent health.
Matthews initially took a couple days off the ice before getting a 25-minute skate in at Scotiabank Arena ahead of last Saturday’s game against Montreal. He skated Sunday at the team’s practice facility as well on what was otherwise an off day for his teammates. However, on Tuesday, Berube said, “It’s just not getting to where it needs to get to, so we’re just trying to manage it.”
The Leafs have been taking a day-by-day approach to Matthews’ recovery and intend to make the best use of the soft pocket in their schedule they currently find themselves in.
With five back-to-backs under their belts already this season, they’ve entered a stretch where they’ll play just three times in 13 days. That leaves Toronto with five potential practice days next week, which could be useful if Matthews is ready to start ramping up his on-ice work at that point in anticipation of a return to play.
It hasn’t always been pretty, but the Leafs have hung in without him, winning four of five games. Increasingly though, the gigantic void he leaves in the lineup has been felt, particularly at centre and in the goal-scoring department.
(Top photo: Aaron Doster / Imagn Images)
