- Auston Matthews’ chiropractor gave his first Toronto radio interview this week
- One line about the Leafs captain’s lower back set off two days of speculation
- Read below for the video, the injury timeline and the numbers behind it
Auston Matthews’ summer was supposed to be about his knee. His chiropractor ended up talking about his back.
Dr. Shawn Robek, the Scottsdale-based sports chiropractor who has worked with the Maple Leafs captain for roughly four years, sat down for his first Toronto radio interview on Thursday. He was walking through the rehab on Matthews’ surgically repaired knee when he slipped in a detail nobody was expecting.
“With Auston, low back was not the concern this year. Obviously, we’re taking care of his knee.”
Two words carried the whole thing. This year.
Robek’s specialty is low-back and neck work as a manual therapist. Telling a Toronto audience that the low back was not the priority this summer sounds an awful lot like saying it has been the priority before.
Sid Seixeiro heard it the same way and called it close to a slip. Watch the video clip that got Leafs fans going:
His production is why this got traction. Matthews put up 69 goals and 107 points in 2023-24, then fell to 33 goals and 78 points the following season. Last year he had 27 goals and 53 points in 60 games.
Nobody in the organization has ever confirmed a back problem, and Robek never said one existed. He said it was not what he was working on this summer.
Even after two down years, Matthews is still ahead of the greatest goal scorer the sport has produced. We charted it last week: 428 goals through 689 career games, one clear of the 427 Alex Ovechkin had at the same point.
That lead was a lot fatter before the drop-off. You can see how quickly the gap closed over the last two seasons.
The knee is the part with an actual paper trail. Matthews suffered a Grade 3 MCL tear and a quadriceps contusion in his left leg on March 12 against the Ducks after a knee-on-knee collision with Radko Gudas, who got five games for it.
Surgery followed and his season was over at 60 games.
All of this started because Robek posted a photo of the two of them grinding through the Scottsdale heat, which is what got him the radio invite in the first place:
Camp is about a month away. Robek says the knee work is on schedule and that Matthews has been showing up energized, which leaves Toronto with a back question nobody was asking on Wednesday.
