Toronto's Season Is Riding On The Health Of Auston Matthews
The Toronto Maple Leafs are on the brink of elimination after falling behind 3-1 in their first round series against the Boston Bruins. They go into tonight's elimination Game 5 with health questions surrounding their best player Auston Matthews.
Toronto's "69 goal" machine has been battling through an illness during the series, believed to be related to food poisoning, which forced him to miss the third period of Game 4 on Saturday and several practices and morning skates over the course of the last week.
It has been revealed that Matthews' status for Game 5 will be a doctor's call. Head coach Sheldon Keefe declined to answer if there is more than just a "sickness" going on with Matthews.
Matthews has been battling this "sickness" for quite sometime, in most cases he should be close to full health by now if this was truly Matthews' only aliment.
Toronto has only managed to score seven goals through the first four games of this series, with Matthews factoring in on almost half of them. (1 goal and 2 assists)
The Maple Leafs were preparing as if #34 would not be in the lineup yesterday, during practice.
Max Domi was working in #34's usual PP1 position, looking to improve on the team's atrocious 1-for-14 power play conversion rate in the series.
If Toronto's reigning Rocket Richard Trophy winner, can't go tonight it will be a huge blow to a team that is already struggling mightily to score in the postseason.
Update:
| POLL | ||
Does Auston Matthews play in Game 5? | ||
| Yes, he NEEDS to no matter what | 58 | 15.2 % |
| No, clearly something serious is going on with him | 323 | 84.8 % |
| List of polls | ||
