Auston Matthews out in latest devastating Leafs injury update

The Toronto Maple Leafs just got hit heavy with a whole whack of injuries right before they face the New Jersey Devils on Tuesday night.

Leading the charge in the latest injury update is that captain Auston Matthews is most likely a game-time decision after blocking a shot against Detroit over the weekend. But less notably, defenseman Chris Tanev and forward Dakota Joshua are also out with no timeline attributed to them. In response for those two, defenseman Matt Benning and young center Jacob Quillan have been recalled from the Marlies.

It is nice to see Quillan get another shot at showing that he really should be a full-time depth forward on this team and potentially this could be a try-out to see if he will replace some players if general manager Brad Treliving decides to sell off at the trade deadline in a few months.

For a little bit more information than the Leafs provided, Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman notes that Tanev's injury is not related to the previous injuries he suffered that made him miss a massive chunk of the season already. Additionally, it looks like he could be out for "some time" -- just to really add an empty hole on Toronto's blue line.

This is now just another group of players that are thrown into the injury sinkhole that the Leafs are currently experiencing. Star forward William Nylander is still out day-to-day, defenseman Brandon Carlo is going to miss a significant amount of time, defenseman Dakota Mermis is out, and goaltender Anthony Stolarz has been out so long we forgot he was even on the team and there is no timeline for his return whatsoever. This now means that six regular contributors to this team -- and five that would be in the upper half of the Leafs' lineup -- are currently out for at least this game against the Devils.

Hopefully this doesn't last too long and Toronto's two most important forwards return to full health in due time.