Maple Leafs captain Auston Matthews was absent from practice on Thursday at the Ford Performance Centre.
The Leafs’ No. 1 centre is day to day with an upper-body injury, an issue that kept him out of the lineup on Tuesday against the Boston Bruins.
As we’ve seen in the past, the Leafs didn’t flinch without their best player. With a 4-0 win against the Bruins, the Leafs improved to 36-19-2 in Matthews’ career when he has not been in the lineup.
In the victory, the Leafs scored three goals on the power play after scoring just four in their previous 13 games.
The expectation would be that Matthews won’t play in the Leafs’ two games this weekend, a back-to-back set at Scotiabank Arena against the Detroit Red Wings and the Montreal Canadiens on Friday and Saturday, respectively.
That has not been confirmed by the team, but it would be unusual for a player to suit up for a game after not practising the day before.
An upper-body issue also caused Matthews to miss some time during training camp.
The Leafs’ next two games after Saturday are on Tuesday at home against the Ottawa Senators and then Wednesday on the road against the Washington Capitals.
At practice on Thursday, coach Craig Berube didn’t make any changes to his forward lines.
Max Domi remained in Matthews’ spot between Mitch Marner and Matthew Knies; John Tavares centred William Nylander and Max Pacioretty; Pontus Holmberg was between Bobby McMann and Nick Robertson while David Kampf centred Steven Lorentz and Ryan Reaves.
There was no sign of defenceman Jani Hakanpaa (knee) and forward Connor Dewar (shoulder). Each is coming to an end of his conditioning stint with the Marlies as terms of being on long-term injured reserve.
More to come …
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