Auston Matthews Is Back: 12 Points in Five Games After the MCL Tear

Auston Matthews answers the knee question

Auston Matthews has 12 points in his last five games, and any doubt about his surgically repaired knee should be over. The Maple Leafs centre was held off the scoresheet in the season's first two games, then went on a run that has produced five goals and seven assists, including the overtime winner against Nashville on Oct. 6 and a two-goal, two-assist night in Colorado on Oct. 10. The NHL named him its first star for the week ending Oct. 11, ahead of Dallas goalie Jake Oettinger and New York Rangers winger Alexis Lafrenière.

He added a power-play goal and an assist in the 5-4 loss in Utah on Oct. 13, which stretched the point streak to five games. LeafsLurker's take: the conversation about whether Matthews is still a franchise centre is over, and the conversation that replaces it, about his next contract, should start in John Chayka's office now rather than next summer.

Where he was in March

The context makes the start more impressive. Matthews's 2025-26 season ended with a knee-on-knee hit from Radko Gudas that caused a Grade 3 MCL tear and a quad contusion. He had MCL repair surgery on March 19, 2026, and missed the final 16 games. He finished with 27 goals and 53 points in 60 games, per CBS Sports, numbers that would be a career year for most players and were a down year for him.

A Grade 3 tear is a full rupture of the ligament. Players return from it, but the first weeks back are when you find out whether a skater trusts the leg in tight turns and on hard stops. Matthews spent part of the summer recovering, looked healthy in a Sept. 23 preseason game with a goal and two assists, and then started the regular season slowly. Two scoreless games, against Montreal and the Islanders, were enough to start the worry.

Remember the standard he is being measured against. Matthews scored 69 goals in 2023-24, won the Hart Trophy in 2022 and has three Rocket Richard Trophies. When he scores 27 goals in 60 games and people call it a disappointment, that is a measure of how high the bar sits, not of how far he fell. The real question going into this season was simpler: would the knee let him play the way he did before the injury, with the quick release from the slot and the strength on the puck along the wall?

Five games later, nobody is worrying. A player protecting a knee does not score in overtime, and he does not put up four points against Colorado at altitude.

The five-game run, game by game

Here is the streak, from Toronto's game results and the league's weekly release:

DateOpponentResultMatthewsOct. 3Ottawa Senators2-3 lossFirst goal of the seasonOct. 6Nashville Predators5-4 OT win1 goal, 3 assists, OT winnerOct. 8at Vegas Golden Knights3-4 shootout loss1 assistOct. 10at Colorado Avalanche6-3 win2 goals, 2 assistsOct. 13at Utah Mammoth4-5 loss1 power-play goal, 1 assist

The Nashville winner was the 15th overtime goal of his career, and the Colorado game was his 19th career four-point game, per The Canadian Press. The league's release credited him with nine points (three goals, six assists) in the three games that made up his first-star week, the most in the NHL.

The power play is a big part of it. Matthews's goal in Utah came on a Tavares feed on the reunited top unit, and the Leafs scored twice with the man advantage that night. We broke down the power-play combinations in our PP1 piece.

What this means for the Leafs' season

Toronto is 3-3-1 and has problems: four goals allowed in the second period in Utah, a rush defence that Morgan Rielly himself said needs fixing, and Chris Tanev on injured reserve. We went through them in our column on the second-period problem.

What the Leafs do not have is a scoring problem at the top. Matthews and William Nylander combined to drive the 6-3 win in Denver, and our look at Nylander's 700th point covered the other half of that equation. With Kirill Marchenko settling in after the Sept. 29 trade with Columbus and Gavin McKenna scoring in big moments, the forward group has the finishing that Chayka built it for. If Matthews stays at this level, the defence becomes the one problem to solve, and it is a solvable one.

The contract clock is already running

Here is the part Toronto cannot ignore. Matthews's current deal carries a $13.25 million cap hit and runs through 2027-28, with a no-movement clause, per our contracts page. That means this season and next are the last two on it. Under the NHL's rules, he becomes eligible to sign an extension on July 1, 2027, one year before he could walk as an unrestricted free agent.

Matthews turned 29 on Sept. 17. A new deal starting in 2028-29 would cover his early-to-mid 30s, and the salary cap, $104 million this season, is projected to keep climbing. The negotiation will be about term more than money: how many years Toronto is willing to commit to a centre coming off a major knee injury, and how many Matthews wants after watching the organization change its GM, coach and much of its roster in a single year.

We pushed back on the idea of moving him in our response to the Matthews-to-Philadelphia prediction. This run makes that argument for us. You do not trade a player who leads the league in weekly scoring two weeks into a season.

What Chayka should do

Chayka cannot sign Matthews to an extension before next July. He can make clear, publicly and privately, that he intends to, and he can build the roster in a way that tells his best player the team is serious. Practically, that means two things this season:

• Fix the defence. A top-four defenceman who can move the puck out of the zone would turn Matthews's offence into wins instead of 5-4 losses.
• Protect the cap structure. Marchenko's $12.5 million extension kicks in for 2027-28, and Raddysh carries $8.5 million through 2033-34. Every long-term dollar Chayka commits now is a dollar not available when Matthews's number comes due.

The worst outcome would be Toronto letting this become a summer-of-2027 story, with Matthews entering the final year of his deal and the trade chatter starting again. The organization has spent a year rebuilding its management, coaching staff and forward group. Its best player just reminded everyone why the rest of it was built around him.

What's next

The Leafs open a four-game homestand against Buffalo on Thursday, Oct. 15, with the Sabres possibly missing Rasmus Dahlin. Our Sabres preview has the details. Matthews takes a five-game point streak into it.

The homestand is a fair test of whether this is a hot week or the new normal. Four games in eight days at Scotiabank Arena, with Hiller holding the last change, should give Matthews the matchups he wants. If the streak survives Buffalo, the Islanders, San Jose and the Rangers, the slow start will be a footnote. Player-by-player numbers are on our players page.