Maple Leafs captain Auston Matthews didn’t wait long to decide if surgery on his left knee was a faster option to recovery.
A week into what was to be a 14-day assessment of the Grade 3 tear of the medial collateral ligament in his left knee, the club announced Thursday afternoon he already had undergone an operation at a medical facility in New York.
It was termed “successful repair surgery” with an approximate recovery time of 12 weeks.
That would put Matthews back on the ice sometime in mid to late July, not long after he would have been into his usual summer workouts in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Outrage over the perceived light sentence given Radko Gudas of the Anaheim Ducks by the league, a five-game suspension for kneeing when a few more games could have been warranted, had given way to concern of Matthews’ condition.
“I saw him at our last game here (Tuesday morning) and he seems okay (mentally),” coach Craig Berube said at Thursday’s Fan Day, prior to the surgery announcement.
“It’s obviously a tough situation for him. It’s like a roller coaster, he wins gold (as captain of Team USA at last month’s Olympics), he comes back, we’re not doing well, then he gets injured. A lot of up and down with him.
“That’s the way it is right now, he’ll deal with it and we’ll do what we have to, help him and get him back healthy.”
The longer-term question is what shape the Leafs will be in as far as franchise direction goes in four to six months, and how a possible rebuild and/or new hockey department hierarchy might influence the final two years of Matthews’ contract.
Of note, Matthews suffered the injury almost exactly 30 years after another Maple Leafs captain, Mats Sundin, had an MCL tear in the playoffs. Toronto was facing elimination in a game in St. Louis and Sundin persevered through the eventual loss with a custom knee brace the Leafs had flown in that day, though the injury to Matthews is much worse.
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