The Toronto Maple Leafs are proud of what they accomplished this season, but will expect more next year, and a healthy Auston Matthews will help that.
Matthews missed a fair bit of time this year because of injury, but it was never totally clear why. As per usual, teams in the NHL are pretty tight lipped about their players’ injuries and the only injury the Leafs spoke about this season was Matthews’ shoulder injury. After two major stints out of the lineup, Matthews ended up playing 62 games in the regular season.
Babcock shed some light on what may have kept him out and pointed out that the injury (Originally suffered in November) had an effect on his game all season.
While it wasn’t much (And a small sample size), October was Auston Matthews’ best month of the season. After that (When the injury happened) his point production dropped off. In October he scored 16 points in 12 games for 1.33 points per game and the rest of the season he played at a 0.94 points per game pace. Matthews’ October totals prorated over a full year would put his point totals at the top of the league, so it will be interesting to see what he can do next year.
Being hunched over skating all game can put a lot of stress on your lower back, so it would definitely have an effect on your skating.
This also explains why he won’t be at the World Hockey Championships this spring. It’s unfortunate because with the Olympics up in the air and the Leafs and Oilers expected to be in the playoffs quite often over the next bunch of years, this could have been one of the few opportunities to see Matthews face off against McDavid on the international stage.
With all of that said, Matthews said there was no new injury in the playoffs and it was just lingering injuries (Probably the same one that Babcock eluded to) that was bothering him a little bit.
