Toronto Maple Leafs' Auston Matthews controls the puck against the St. Louis Blues, in St. Louis on Nov. 2.Connor Hamilton/The Associated Press
It looks like Maple Leafs fans might have to wait until Saturday for Auston Matthews to return to the lineup.
The team’s star centre took part in a full team practice on Tuesday for the first time since he sustained an undisclosed upper body injury on May 3.
Matthews, who travelled to Germany last week to see a specialist, said he felt fine but left the door open to sitting out Wednesday’s game in Sunrise, Fla., against the Florida Panthers.
“We’ll see,” Matthews said. “I’ll get with the training staff and chat some more. Individual skates are much different than a team practice.
“I may need one or two to get my legs and lungs back under me. We’ll see how I respond today and see what happens tomorrow.”
The club flew to South Florida after practice. If Matthews does not play against the Stanley Cup champions, he will almost certainly return against the Lightning in Tampa on Saturday.
“It was great having him out there,” Craig Berube, the Maple Leafs head coach, said Tuesday. “He looked really good in practice. There are a lot of good signs pointing in the right direction.
“The tricky part is practice. He looked fine and felt fine but not having a lot of practice time is a bit concerning.”
Toronto has gone 7-1 since Matthews last suited up against the Minnesota Wild and has leapfrogged over the Panthers into first place in the NHL’s Atlantic Division. It is 7-2-1 over its past 10 contests, at the same time Florida has fallen into a 4-6 slump.
He was originally listed as day to day, but then the team placed him on injured reserve dating back to Nov. 3.
Last week general manager Brad Treliving then announced that Matthews had travelled to Germany along with a team physician for a second opinion.
Matthews had five goals and six assists in Toronto’s first 13 games.
On Tuesday he practised on the second line with William Nylander and Pontus Holmberg, and joked that he may have to learn some Swedish. Bobby McMann, John Tavares and Mitch Marner have been extremely productive on the first line in Matthews’s absence. Marner may be playing his best ever as a Maple Leaf with six goals and 14 points over the past eight games.
“The line has been very good,” Berube said after practice. “I felt really reluctant to put Mitch and Auston back together.”
Anthony Stolarz, who leads all NHL goalies with 10 starts with a .927 save percentage, will be in the crease versus Florida and its elite netminder Sergei Bobrovsky.
Stolarz, Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Steven Lorentz, all of whom played for the Panthers last season, will receive their Stanley Cup rings before the morning skate.
“It’s not something that happens every day,” said Stolarz, who served as Bobrovsky’s backup in 2023-24. “It’s something I will hopefully keep in my family for generations.”
We’ll only know for sure on Wednesday whether Matthews is back or still a few days away. The 69 goals he scored last season were the most in the NHL since Mario Lemieux accomplished the same feat three decades earlier.
“It’s exciting for sure,” Stolarz said after watching Matthews practice. “He’s a big part of our team and our captain so to have him back and have his presence at both ends of the ice is going to be really good for our team.”
Berube will have the last call. Sort of.
“When a player comes to me and tells me he is ready to go, he is ready to go,” the coach said.