Auston Matthews spent the 2015-2016 season playing in the Swiss league for the Zurich Lions. The team, founded in 1930, has won the championship five times since 2000, but with Marc Crawford behind the bench and Auston Matthews on the ice, they were swept out of the playoffs in 2016 in the first round.
That early playoff exit undid a lot of the value of Matthews to the team.
ZSC released their annual report at their general assembly recently, and it shows a loss on the season of 2.325 million Swiss francs (3.12 million Canadian dollars).