‘I don’t know, I hope so’: Maple Leafs’ Auston Matthews on if he’ll fully recover from injury

Auston Matthews will miss his sixth straight game Thursday when the Toronto Maple Leafs take on the New York Islanders, and his 15th total.

In an interview with The Athletic’s Jonas Siegel, the Leafs captain spoke about the nagging upper-body injury that’s affected him since the beginning of the season. While he hopes the injury will resolve itself, he’s not sure.

“I don’t know. I hope so,” Matthews said. “That’s obviously the goal. It’s tricky with these things sometimes,” adding that hockey is a physical sport and that “things happen” that are out of your control.

Matthews hasn’t played since Dec. 20 when he scored a goal and played 19:18 in a 6-3 win over the Buffalo Sabres. He also missed nine games in November due to an upper-body injury, which led to the 27-year-old spending a few days in Germany to visit a specialist for his injury.

Through 24 games this season, Matthews has 11 goals and 12 assists for 23 points, and despite missing 13 games is still fourth on the team in points.

“When you’re injured as a player and (people) are always asking you ‘how you feeling?’ it gets annoying,” Head Coach Craig Berube said. “When he’s available, he’ll let us know.”

The 2016 No. 1 overall pick scored a career-high 69 goals in 2023-24, winning the Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy for the third time of his career. Matthews has scored at least 40 goals in each of the last five seasons. Through nine NHL seasons, Matthews has 379 goals and 293 assists for 672 points in 586 career regular-season games.

The Leafs are 23-13-2 with 48 points, first in the Atlantic Division and sixth in the league standings. After they play the Islanders Jan. 2, they have a two-game home stand Jan. 4 and 5 against the Boston Bruins and Philadelphia Flyers, respectively.