Bad News for Team USA: Auston Matthews Battling with Injury, per Elliotte Friedman

With Team USA looking to give themselves another win in the 4 Nations Faceoff, they take on Team Sweden as they set their sights on the finals against Team Canada.

But they will need to tackle the game without captain Auston Matthews -- who according to NHL Insider Elliotte Friedman is going to miss the game due to illness.

While it's unknown what exactly is going on, with Matthews battling something and the amount of illness that has gone around recently, it wouldn't be surprising if a virus got ahold of him.

It seems Team Sweden has also felt the illness bug as Linus Ullmark was ill and replaced by Samuel Ersson, meanwhile Mika Zibanejad and Rickard Rakell are both missing as well.

It's an unfortunate turn of events for both teams as it seems the tournament has been marred with a bit of bad luck recently.

It started even before the tournament with Alex Pietrangelo pulling out due to injury, as well as others like Miro Heiskanen and Jani Hakanpaa missing as well -- it feels a bit cursed.

Next came Shea Theodore for Team Canada then Cale Makar as well, then Matthew Tkachuk for Team USA followed by now Matthews and the Swedes. It's been a rough go to say the least and it's led to questions about how the next best-on-best tournament will go.

It's why there's a need for some type of reserve system when it comes to these types of events, where injuries can and do happen. If Team USA had a couple of bodies hanging around TD Garden, they could possibly have used them instead of Matthews.

With the final game coming on Thursday and it being one of the most anticipated games in recent memory, the Americans are hoping that Matthews will play -- and knowing him he will.

But if whatever is ailing him passes around the locker room and leads to some more absences -- let's hope Canada takes full advantage.