Toronto Maple Leafs captain Auston Matthews will sit out the remainder of the 2025-26 regular season after suffering a knee injury, the team announced on Friday.
Injury Details
Matthews sustained a Grade 3 MCL tear and quad contusion during the second period of the Maple Leafs’ game against the Anaheim Ducks on March 12. The team plans to re-evaluate him in about two weeks and provide an update then.
How the Injury Occurred
The injury resulted from a knee-on-knee collision with Anaheim Ducks defenseman Radko Gudas during Thursday’s 6-4 victory. Gudas received an immediate ejection, and the NHL’s Department of Player Safety scheduled a phone hearing with him Friday afternoon. Matthews needed help to leave the ice.
“That’s a dirty play,” Leafs head coach Craig Berube stated after the game.
Impact on the Maple Leafs
This setback hits a struggling Maple Leafs squad likely to miss the playoffs for the first time since 2017. The win over the Ducks ended an eight-game winless streak.
On March 9, in his last media session of the season, Matthews commented on the team’s challenges: “I feel I’m just going to continue to repeat myself here, but it’s tough. We’re in a stretch where everything that seems to possibly go wrong, goes wrong.”
Matthews’ Injury History
Matthews has battled multiple injuries this season. He suffered a lower-body issue in November against the Boston Bruins, traveled to Germany for treatment of an upper-body injury that November—missing nine games—and re-aggravated it in December, sitting out six more. In the 2024 playoffs, he missed Games 5 and 6 of the first-round series against the Bruins due to head injury issues, as noted by general manager Brad Treliving.
Season Performance
Just five minutes before the injury, Matthews ended a 12-game goalless streak, his second-longest career drought. While defensively solid as a two-way forward, his offensive output has declined. His shot lacks previous power, and he has struggled to dominate near the net.
Advanced metrics show his 1.11 five-on-five goals per 60 minutes this season as his second-lowest career mark, according to Natural Stat Trick—trailing only last year.
Earlier, Matthews captained the U.S. men’s Olympic team to gold in February, scoring three goals and seven points in six games.
