Maple Leafs lose Auston Matthews after controversial hit from Radko Gudas

The Toronto Maple Leafs are already having a terrible and pointless season as they are almost guaranteed to miss the playoffs for the first time this decade. To just make it worse, on Thursday night they have potentially lost their captain to a brutal injury after a dirty hit from a notorious player.

During the second period of the Leafs hosting the Anaheim Ducks, Leafs captain Auston Matthews was trying to make a play, stickhandling the puck in the slot to try and dish it to an open teammate, but Ducks blueliner Radko Gudas came charging in and decided to make the dirtiest possible play.

Leafs lose Auston Matthews to injury after extremely dirty play

Instead of playing the puck or paying attention to anything else on the ice, the notoriously dirty defenseman went in charging and hit Matthews right on and it resulted in one of the nastiest-looking knee-on-knee collisions we've seen in a long time.

That is devastating. Gudas was ejected from the game and the Leafs were handed a five-minute major power play. John Tavares ended up scoring on the man advantage to tie the game heading into the second intermission -- but no one really cares about the actual game.

At the time of writing, there has been no official announcement from the Leafs that Matthews will miss the remainder of the game, but considering that the Leafs are flirting with being one of the worst teams in the entire NHL (if they aren't that already), one has to imagine that they don't want their best player back on the ice even if he believes he's going to be 100% fine to play.

Earlier in the game, too, Matthews was able to get on the score sheet, with a wicked one-timer from the right faceoff dot on the power play, to cut the Ducks' lead to 3-2. Before, you know, he got his kneecap smashed into a billion little pieces by some Czech guy that has made a career out of potentially ending other players' careers years early.

Stay tuned for an official update from the Leafs.

Update: Auston Matthews officially out for the rest of the game

We said that there was no official update, and then there was. Announced by the Leafs, Matthews is done for the night and will be evaluated further for a potential lengthy injury.