Auston Matthews' charming Switzerland video comes with one major knee-injury caveat

The video is charming, and it tells us less about his knee than it appears.

The Toronto Maple Leafs captain visited the HC Davos training facility alongside Joe Thornton, who filmed the session on his phone.

Davos said U21 goaltender Silvano Andri was called in spontaneously for a short session. That matters, because this was not a Leafs-produced update or a staged health checkpoint.

It looked like a star easing off for a teenager, placing pucks at the blocker and glove instead of picking corners. There is a less sentimental explanation.

Shots to a goalie's chest and pads require the least lateral weight transfer and the least rotation through a plant leg. Matthews tore his MCL in his left knee on March 12 after a knee-on-knee collision with Radko Gudas of the Anaheim Ducks.

He had surgery in New York on March 19 with a 12-week healing window. That window closed in mid-June, so light shooting in August sits exactly where a normal timeline would put it.

Standing and shooting is the least demanding thing a rehabbing forward can do on skates. Nothing in the clip shows hard crossovers, tight cuts under load, or contact.

Those are the movements a repaired MCL resists, and none of them appear in a summer promo video from a Swiss club. Training camp in September is the first honest read.

That matters for John Chayka, who became general manager in May and spent the summer adding around a healthy Matthews. Jim Hiller, hired as head coach in June, inherits the question.

Thornton won a Spengler Cup and a Swiss title with Davos in the 2004-05 lockout season, and Matthews played 2015-16 with the ZSC Lions before Toronto drafted him first overall.

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