Auston Matthews’ injury presents a best- or worse-case scenario for Leafs’ season
It doesn’t get much more ‘2025-26 Toronto Maple Leafs‘ than captain Auston Matthews ending a 12-game goal drought, the longest since his rookie season of 2016-17, only to be helped off the ice minutes later.
It wasn’t quite a high during a lost season doomed to plunge the Leafs out of the playoffs for the first time in nine years and the first time in Matthews’ career. Yet the Scotiabank Arena faithful experienced a fleeting dopamine rush when Matthews slapped a one-timer past Anaheim Ducks goaltender Lukas Dostal at 10:47 of the second period.
But was Matthews five minutes away from the end of his season at that exact moment? Time will tell.
At 15:47 of the second period during Toronto’s 6-4 win, Matthews tried to cut around burly Ducks blueliner Radko Gudas. The two collided knee on knee, Matthews crashed to the ice in agony, and Gudas was handed a five-minute major for kneeing and a game misconduct. Matthews lay motionless for one minute that felt like 10 before being helped down the tunnel to the Leafs room. Gudas, a three-time suspendee by the NHL Department of Player Safety, isn’t considered a repeat offender since his last supplemental discipline came in 2019, but the look wasn’t great for a player with a history of injuring his opponents – most recently Canada’s Sidney Crosby during its quarterfinal win over Gudas’ Czechia at the 2026 Olympics.
The Leafs pulled out a come-from-behind victory, flexing quite a bit of (delayed) aggression in the third, but the brief triumph gave way to extreme concern after the game. What is Matthews’ status? Coach Craig Berube had no update, only that Matthews “will be getting looked at tomorrow.”
“I didn’t like it,” said Leafs center John Tavares of the Gudas hit. “Really clips him pretty good, thought it was dirty. The referees made the call, reviewed it and made the right call, and I think we responded well with taking advantage of the [power play] opportunity that we had, and we hope [Matthews] is all right.
“I haven’t seen him since. Obviously when he doesn’t come back, you’re concerned, but I know how tough he is, how committed he is to taking care of himself, so hopefully it’s nothing serious.”
“I didn’t have a good view of it just because the puck was going another way, but it’s on me for not responding earlier to Gudas being there,” said Leafs defenseman Morgan Rielly. “It’s a dirty hit. I didn’t understand how bad he got him in the moment. But I take full responsibility for not being the first to be in there quicker to respond.”
Regardless of how many games Matthews plays between now and mid-April, the 2025-26 campaign is already lost for Toronto, hence last week’s Trade Deadline selloff of veterans Nicolas Roy, Bobby McMann and Scott Laughton. The only hope now is that Matthews’ injury isn’t serious enough to damage next season’s prospects. The Florida Panthers, destined to miss the playoffs and therefore the chance to defend their back-to-back Stanley Cup titles, are living proof that a catastrophic knee injury to your best player can derail a season. Their fate was sealed when Aleksander Barkov went down with a torn ACL and MCL during the team’s first practice of training camp in September. If Matthews’ injury is bad enough to carry an eight-to-nine-month type of timeline, it could drastically alter the Leafs’ 2026-27 plans. Maybe a planned retool turns into more of a rebuild, with far more than cosmetic roster changes, and even morphs MLSE’s perception of GM Brad Treliving’s job security.
It’s way too soon to forecast that worst-case scenario, of course. There’s another outcome that, if we’re honest with ourselves, greatly benefits the Leafs: an injury bad enough to end Matthews’ season but mild enough to heal in time for training camp. That could constitute a morbid form of “load management,” keep Toronto’s superstar off the ice for the balance of 2025-26 and significantly increase the Leafs’ chances of finishing 2025-26 among the NHL’s bottom five teams. Right now, the only way they don’t relinquish their 2026 NHL Draft first-round pick to the Boston Bruins is by winning the lottery; otherwise, they need a bottom-five finish in the standings to trigger the protection of the pick they surrendered in the Brandon Carlo trade last year.
No one would ever wish for their team’s star player to suffer a major injury. The Leafs can only hold their breath on the diagnosis. But in the short to medium term, Matthews’ absence could add a few ping-pong balls to their lottery push. It also might help a directionless franchise find a certain purpose across the final 16 games of the season. The Leafs will have no choice but to depend on their depth and, ideally, their younger talent to eat up some of Matthews’ minutes; Max Domi might move to the middle and force Easton Cowan and Nick Robertson into more responsibility, and center Jacob Quillan may get a longer look now – and higher in the lineup. Cowan earned a lot of respect from his teammates and coach by dropping the gloves with the much larger Jackson LaCombe in the third period Thursday. AHL standout Benoit-Olivier Groulx seized his moment, too, with a goal to make it 5-3 which turned out to be the game-winner. It’s time to see if he can be a regular NHL contributor going forward.
“Very happy with him,” Berube said. “Thought he handled himself extremely well out there. Key situations, penalty kill, he was on the power play, a lot of D-zone face offs against good players, and I thought he had great composure.”
If Berube is missing his best chess piece, he may have no choice but to trust some of his unproven ones. The increased opportunities could lay groundwork for gains next season.
If not – and Matthews’ injury simply makes the Leafs quit – that isn’t necessarily terrible news. Keep a close eye on the standings – and those Draft Lottery odds.
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