There’s no guarantee that Toronto Maple Leafs center Auston Matthews will be out on the ice on Opening Night, as he is still recuperating from surgery on his left wrist back in August. He could have gone under the knife earlier, which would have given him more time to heal up, but in an appearance on 31 Thoughts podcast, the high-scoring center explains why he decided to wait for August (h/t Luke Fox of Sportsnet).

“I was able to kinda get it calmed down a little bit,” Matthews explained. “So, after the season we went through that whole process to just kind of see how it goes and see if it feels any better.”

When that didn’t seem to do the trick, Matthews knew he had to make a move right away to address his wrist issue before it gets serious.

“It just didn’t feel right, so I decided to get another opinion and imaging and stuff like that and clean it up a little bit,” Matthews said.

The training camp will begin this September and based on the tone of Matthews, there’s a good chance he’ll be able to join his Maple Leafs teammates for on-ice activities by then. As for the official start of the 2021-22 NHL season, that will be on October 14.

Matthews and the Maple Leafs are looking to have another great regular season and hopefully a much deeper run in the next playoffs after they were upset in the first round of the last postseason by the Montreal Canadiens.