Leafs officially place Auston Matthews on injured reserve

UPDATE: The Toronto Maple Leafs have officially placed captain Auston Matthews onto the injured reserve retroactive to December 20th.

Check it out:

To be clear, Matthews is still eligible to be added to the team's roster at any time, so this might be more of a 'paper transaction' from the Leafs' front office in order to gain some roster flexibility. Stay tuned for any corresponding moves or recalls amongst the Leafs' forward group.

Read below for yesterday's report on Matthews' status, published by Hockey Feed staff writer Jonathan Larrivee.

There were some good signs for the Toronto Maple Leafs when it comes to injured captain Auston Matthews on Monday morning but unfortunately that was where the good news for the Maple Leafs ended.

After Matthews hit the ice for practice for the first time since being injured back on the 20th of December, Maple Leafs head coach Craig Berube spoke to the media and addressed the status of his captain. Unfortunately the news from Berube was not good and instead he confirmed that Matthews would miss at least one more game in spite of the fact that the Maple Leafs don't play again until Tuesday.

"Tomorrow he will not play," confirmed Berube. "He did a good job in practice today I thought and I think he feels pretty good so we'll just go from there. That's all I really got for you on that."

In spite of the fact that Matthews will not play when the Maple Leafs play the New York Islanders on Tuesday, Berube did take heart in the fact that Matthews was out on the ice today and did participate, at least partially, in the practice with the rest of his teammates despite leaving early.

"It was good to see Auston out there skating with us, that was a good sign, and I think everybody's excited about him being out there too," said Berube.

The Maple Leafs have won just one of the four games that they have thus far been forced to play without their captain in the lineup so no doubt Berube is correct when he says that the rest of the team is also excited at the prospect of Matthews' return to the lineup sooner rather than later.

Stay tuned for more on this developing story.