Toronto Maple Leafs: Perfect Without Matthews

The Toronto Maple Leafs are perfect without their best player.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have played five games without Auston Matthews. They won all five of them.

No one – as far as I know – knows what Matthews’ injury is.  The NHL is secretive to the point where I think it’s disrespectful to fans.  We pay a ton of money to watch this sport, we put a lot of time in, and when you don’t know why or how long your favorite team’s most important player is out for, it’s a joke.

If you have money to spend on a game, you deserve to know if there is a reasonable chance the player you’re paying to see is going to pay.  The NHL claims other teams could target injured areas, but this is preposterous.  I’d bet any money that I might have that whether or not it’s public knowledge, every player, manager and coach knows who is injured and where.

The only ones who don’t know are the fans.

Now, we can speculate:  Perhaps Matthews was injured in Pittsburgh when he bumped into Morgan Rielly and was seen holding his head on the bench.  But then again, he didn’t even get called to the concussion protocol quiet room, and he returned to the ice shortly after.

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So maybe he has a concussion.  Or maybe they don’t want to risk anything to do with the head given it’s back to back games.  Or maybe it’s totally unrelated and it has something to do with whyever he missed four games earlier in the year.  Who knows?

Matthews Back?

Regardless of the mystery, it does appear as though Matthews won’t miss tomorrow’s game in Philadelphia.  (Speaking of which, doesn’t it seem like bad scheduling to go back to Toronto for a game sandwiched between two games in the same state?).

Although it’s pretty cool that the Leafs are 5-0 without their best player, I am hopeful that people realize that that is just a coincidence.   Auston Matthews – who has improved over an insanely great rookie season – is the Leafs best player and their biggest reason for winning most of the nights when they do.

It just so happens that in all of his missed games, the Toronto Maple Leafs have been getting excellent goaltending.  Picking up wins without Matthews might be a little lucky, but getting those points when maybe you don’t deserve to is what can really lead to some separation in the standings in a league where the salary cap and the loser-points conspire to keep the standings as close as possible all year long.

Next: Marlies Weekly Update

The Leafs may be perfect without Matthews so far, but they’re clearly 10 x better when he’s in the lineup.