Leafs’ Auston Matthews out for season after knee-to-knee hit

Toronto Maple Leafs captain Auston Matthews will miss the remainder of the 2025-26 NHL season with a torn medial collateral ligament in his left knee, the team announced Friday.

Matthews, who has a Grade 3 MCL tear and a bruised quadriceps muscle, will be reevaluated in two weeks.

The Maple Leafs’ update came a little less than 24 hours after Matthews was knocked out of Thursday night’s game against the Anaheim Ducks on a knee-on-knee hit from Radko Gudas.

Gudas was given a major penalty and ejected. On Friday night, he was suspended five games for kneeing, the maximum the league’s Department of Safety could levy because his hearing was by phone.

Matthews’ agent, Judd Moldaver, said in a statement that “in light of the obvious severity of the play, I am very disappointed and shocked that the league would allow for such a ruling.” Moldaver took issue with the decision to limit the suspension to five games.

Trying to make a move around Gudas in the slot in the second period of Toronto’s 6-4 victory, Matthews took a direct blow to his left leg and crashed to the ice. The U.S. Olympic team captain stayed down before being helped to the locker room.

Maple Leafs coach Craig Berube made it clear he wasn’t happy about the Gudas hit and that none of Matthews’ teammates stepped in to engage Gudas following the strike.

“It’s a dirty play,” Berube said. “We should have had four guys in there doing something about it. … We all would have liked everyone to get in there right away.”

Gudas is the bruising Czech defender who ended Canadian captain Sidney Crosby’s Olympics in the quarterfinals with a hit.

“He’s done a few of those before in his career,” Toronto winger Matthew Knies said.

Ducks coach Joel Quenneville defended his player.

“There’s no premeditation,” Quenneville said. “Reflexes did it.”

Matthews, 28, finishes the season with 27 goals and 53 points in 60 games. Toronto is projected to miss the postseason for the first time since Matthews entered the league as the No. 1 pick in 2016. Toronto is third to last in the Eastern Conference with a 28-27-11 record.

It has been a trying season for Matthews and the Maple Leafs, who snapped an eight-game winless streak with the victory over the Ducks. Matthews ended a 12-game scoreless drought with a power-play goal before the hit from Gudas.

The Maple Leafs take on the Atlantic Division-leading Buffalo Sabres on Saturday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.