Auston Matthews is set to return to the ice on Saturday against Tampa Bay.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are off to a good start of the 2024 season. Toronto sits at the top of the Eastern Conference standings with 28 points as they prepare for a big game against Tampa Bay on Saturday. The Leafs got some great injury news about their best player heading into this game.
Leafs center Auston Matthews is expected to return to the starting lineup against the Lightning, per Luke Fox of Sportsnet.
“Auston Matthews says he's playing,” Fox posted on social media on Friday.
Getting Matthews back is huge for the Leafs. Toronto did go 7-2 without their superstar center, but they are still thrilled to get a boost by getting him back in the starting lineup.
Matthews has not played since suffering an upper-body injury on November 3rd.
Matthews has to return for Leafs after returning to practice this week
Matthews has been healthy for a few days now. However, head coach Craig Berube wanted to get Matthews multiple practices before his official return to the ice.
Matthews participated in practice on Tuesday but did not end up playing on Wednesday night against the Panthers.
“I felt pretty good, so we will just take it step by step,” Matthews said after practice, per Dave McCarthy of NHL.com. “I don’t know, we’ll see. I’ll get with the training staff and chat some more. The individual skates are much different than a team practice, so this being the first actual team practice I skated in, I felt really good. But I might need maybe one or two [practices] to really get my legs and lungs back under me, but we will just kind of see how I respond today and see how it goes tomorrow.”
Apparently Matthews' trip to Germany to see Dr. Hans-Wilhelm Muller-Wohlfahrt was a good decision.
It will be interesting to see if Matthews has an immediate impact in his return on Saturday.
