Auston Matthews returned to the ice with his teammates on Saturday.
The Maple Leafs center spun the puck, participated in drills and seemed to move well in Toronto’s morning skate.
Whether or not Matthews returns to action with his club’s season once again on the line remains to be seen.
The ailing sharpshooter has not been ruled out for Game 7 of the Leafs’ first-round playoff series against the Boston Bruins, but head coach Sheldon Keefe seemed to suggest his best player is not ready to return.
“We’ll see what the day brings,” Keefe said. “But as of now, we have all our forwards who have been playing in the series getting ready to play.
“With Auston, obviously, if he’s available you’ll use him. But as of now we’re proceeding as we have been.”
Matthews hasn’t dressed since Game 4, when doctors took him out of action during the second intermission due to an illness.
Toronto faced a steep climb as the Original Six faced 3-1 minus its main attraction before posting consecutive 2-1 wins, including an overtime win on the road in Game 5, to force a finale in which the winner takes it all at TD Garden.
Leafs winger Mitch Marner was asked how Matthews, who arrived at the rink Saturday morning wearing a Star Wars jersey, had been handling the absence.
“They ask you 1,000 times a day, ‘How are you?'” Marner said. “It’s annoying. He wants to be out there. He’s a great competitor. You’ve seen it at every level.”
Keefe was asked before Game 5 if there was anything else, namely an injury, that worried Matthews, but he declined to answer directly.
The workhorse forward, who led the NHL with the league’s first 69-goal regular season in nearly three decades, skated Wednesday at the team’s practice facility and again Thursday for about 30 minutes before Game 6.
The Leafs also dealt with the absence of winger William Nylander (undisclosed injury) for the first three games of the best-of-seven matchup.
Toronto rallied from 3-1 deficits in 2013 and 2018 against Boston before losing Game 7 on the road. The Bruins also defeated the Leafs in a series that went down to the wire in 2019 at TD Garden.
The winner of Toronto-Boston will face the rested Florida Panthers in the second round starting Monday after they dispatched the Tampa Bay Lightning 4-1.
Matthews, a three-time winner of the Maurice (Rocket) Richard Trophy as the NHL’s leading scorer, had a monster three-point Game 2 to help Toronto even the series at 1-1. But he didn’t look like himself two nights later in a 4-2 loss as he battled an illness that would eventually force him out of Game 4.
Toronto is 3-0 this season without Matthews, including two elimination-facing wins this week and a 7-0 regular-season win over the Pittsburgh Penguins in mid-December.
Toronto is 1-16 all-time when trailing 3-1 in a series, but Boston blew the same lead last season in the first round against Florida.
Matthews became the first NHL player since Mario Lemieux in 1995-96 to reach 69 goals, coming one shy of becoming the ninth in history to reach 70.
“He’s been making progress,” Keefe said. “There’s no determination on his status for (Game 7)… the last time we were here, I think he was on the ice for about 10 minutes.
“(Saturday) we got him about 15, so that’s progress, but there’s no determination on his status.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 4, 2024.