Darkness shrouds Matthews' injury. NHL fans deserve to know more

How far would an NHL player have to go for medical treatment before his team acknowledged that it's perhaps a little concerning?

For the Toronto Maple Leafs, the answer is, evidently, further than Germany.

The news this week that star center Auston Matthews popped over to Deutschland for reasons the team explained were no big deal - just a little checkup, a bit of maintenance, a transatlantic touch-up - put a bow on what's been a ridiculous bit of injury secrecy from the outset.

In late September, Leafs coach Craig Berube said Matthews was dealing with, in classic NHL parlance, an "upper-body injury." Wrist, arm, shoulder, head? Ear? Mouth? Who's to say. But the coach also said it wasn't serious and that Matthews "should be fine."

By early November, Matthews, still not fine, was placed on injured reserve. But even then, the team was at pains to downplay the significance of the move. There were reports the IR designation was more about roster management, and speculation that the 69-goal scorer was days away from a possible return. The team described his undisclosed injury as "day-to-day" from the start, after all.

Matthews returned to the ice Saturday skating on his own, almost three weeks since he last played, which is, one supposes, day-to-day in a sense. We're all day-to-day, really.

But beyond the silliness and the subterfuge, there are reasons why the NHL's commitment to vague injury reporting is a problem.

The league, and not just the Maple Leafs, is an outlier. The NFL has strict injury-reporting protocols, requiring teams to disclose the nature of an ailment and the potential of that player's fitness to play. This information flow is simply good business, as it underpins the fantasy football and gambling industries that have helped drive the NFL's booming success.

The NBA takes a similar approach, listing injury details to a sometimes comical degree. The Toronto Raptors provided daily updates on the status of Scottie Barnes, whose recent injury was specified as a fracture to his right orbital bone. You'd only have to look at his face to figure out which side is hurt: one eye looks normal, the other is the stuff of nightmares. But thanks anyway for the details, Raptors. This is how it should be done.

The NHL goes the other way. At one point during Wednesday's Maple Leafs game, the TV broadcast showed a graphic of Toronto's ailing forwards: upper body, upper body, lower body, lower body, and groin. I'm sure there's a different explanation for it, but it's fun to imagine someone specified Calle Jarnkrok's groin injury because they couldn't decide if it should be classified as lower body or upper body. Kind of middle body?

Complaints about the NHL's secrecy have been ongoing for years, and not just from grumpy media members who prefer to have actual information in their stories instead of vague statements. The league's embrace of legalized sports betting was once thought to be likely to force its hand, but so far it's resisted.

Deputy commissioner Bill Daly told reporters, including theScore's John Matisz, at the player media tour in Las Vegas in September that the league "received no pushback at all from any of our sportsbook (partners) on our current injury-reporting practices." He went on to say the NHL's general managers prefer to keep things opaque - I'm paraphrasing here - and that "there's really no reason to change the rule."

But the NHL is a business that has paying customers who consume its product. It owes a better flow of information to those people who may be considering paying many hundreds of dollars for tickets to a particular game: Is the star player likely to be out for a long stretch? Is there no chance he plays? Is he even on the same continent?

The NHL's competitors have at least acknowledged this reality. The NBA introduced rules to try to limit the number of games star players would miss due to rest, and when, for example, the Philadelphia 76ers were found to have been inaccurate with their disclosures about center Joel Embiid's health, they were dinged with a $100,000 fine.

The Maple Leafs, meanwhile, could announce Sunday that Matthews was seeking a second opinion somewhere in the southern hemisphere and that he'd return to play sometime between Tuesday and February and the NHL would basically shrug. For fans who'd like to know more about the team in which they invest their time and money: too bad.

On Wednesday, as Matthews missed his seventh straight game, his teammate Matthew Knies was drilled with a dirty hit by Vegas' Zach Whitecloud. Knies took a blow to the head, as was obvious to anyone in the arena or watching on TV, and didn't return to the game. The Maple Leafs cited only an injury to his upper body.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.