One of the rites of spring is for NHL coaches, who worked so diligently during the season — and especially during the playoffs — to guard injury news, to loosen up and talk about what ailments their players had been dealing with. Terry Murray did that today, and in a couple cases, it impacts players who might have been otherwise going to the IIHF World Championships, which start next week. First, Murray talks about some of the playoff injuries…
MURRAY: “Harrold broke his wrist, and that’s why he came out of the lineup. Doughty has been nursing quite a few injuries, actually. The biggest problem that he has right now, probably, is the sprained thumb, sprained wrist. I know Quick, he got fell on there — I don’t remember exactly what game it was — in his crease and had a slight issue with his shoulder. Clune is not a structural problem. As I mentioned the day after it happened, it’s a stinger. It’s just going to take some time to back away and get through the rehab in the next few weeks. There’s more guys. I can’t think of it off the top of my head. But being banged up is a good thing. You’ve got to pay a price in order to play the game. You go through real hard times, difficult games, and you put yourself in tough situations to score and in tough areas, and you’re going to come away, at the end of the game, with ice bags on. That’s all part of it.”
The Kings have a handful of players in contention for spots on various World Championships teams. Murray said he thought Alexander Frolov would be participating. Jack Johnson (USA) is in, but Drew Doughty (Canada) and Dustin Brown (USA) are out, and Michal Handzus (Slovakia) is undecided. It had been reported by TSN that Wayne Simmonds (Canada) is interested in playing, but so that’s a possibility. Here’s what the other guys had to say today, about their World Championships availability.
JOHNSON: “Yeah, I’ll be going.”
DOUGHTY: “No, I’m not going to go to World Championships. I’ve got a banged-up injury here. My hand is messed up. I messed up my hand in that series, so I’m going to take off the World Championships. … Nothing big. We don’t know what it is yet. We have to get an MRI and stuff like that, so we’ll see what happens. It was Game 1 that it happened. I just kept playing on it. The more I play on it, the worse it gets, so that’s why I’m taking off World Championships.”
BROWN: “I’m not sure if I’ve been invited yet, but I think I’m going to pass. It’s a long year, and I might possibly get some stuff done with my teeth. It’s pretty extensive (work), major bone graft and stuff. I lost my teeth, however many years ago, and I’m starting to lose the bone. It’s one of those things. I don’t know the whole exact science of it, but there’s one surgery, and then it has to heal for five or six months, and then another surgery. It kind of takes me two or three years to do it. With the way our schedule is built, it’s going to take a few years to get it all fixed. So I figured I’d get it started now. … I had one surgery a few years ago and it didn’t go well, so hopefully it will work out better this time.”
HANDZUS: “I got called, and I told them I just need a couple days. It’s been disappointing, so from my experience I know that maybe in the next couple days I’m going to feel differently. I don’t know. it’s a lot to think over, so I don’t know. A couple days, and I’ll know after that.”
I wonder if Quick’s shoulder injury was on his glove side? May have something to do with Vancouver exploiting that side. I could speculate all day on that, but it’s probably best just to leave it alone. I’m sure someone else can do a better job with Vancouver-style conspiracy theories.
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hope zus does it!!! i was hoping to see doughty in it but id rather he get better!!!
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Handzus change his citizenship lately? Cool!
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I know Rypien is considered the pound-for-pound best fighter blah blah whatever… but did anyone else find his tactics bizarre? Watching the fight again, Rypien immediately reaches into the back of Clune’s jersey, underneath his pads, as if he was trying to separate Clunatic’s shoulder or go for some pressure points (it was weird). Maybe I’m being a touch dramatic, but I’ve never seen that before. Seems like an unfair fight if one guy is breaking out some ancient Taekwondo technique when the other just wants to drop gloves and throw some haymakers.
Anyway, I’m glad the Clunatic only has a stinger, and hope he heals soon enough. Because, wow, he was in a really bad way when he skated off the ice as soon as the fight ended.
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Ha…dual citizenship, maybe!
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If Brownie gets his grill fixed,he won’t slurr his S’s.No one in the locker room will recognize him when he talks.
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Quick “had a slight issue with his shoulder.”? Sounds like it would have been a good time for a call up. But that’s me. Any word on TV coverage for world?
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i thought that simmer would rest his knee…i guess my concern is unwarranted…
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boy was I wrong about Harrold. Mr Brett7 and a few others were right on. I should have listened.
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Quick has a slight issue with his shoulder?
The same shoulder where he can’t really react on high shots, glove side?
The same shoulder where he was regularly beaten in the 7-hole?
Somehow, that sounds like an explanation for a lot of JQ’s problems… Especially if it occured in March, just before the Olympics!
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shoulder injury and you still let HIM PLAY!!! WTF.. that’s bull. they should of called up bernie… or let esberg play.
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I can totally understand Dustin’s predicament. Bone grafts do take a long time to heal. And can be really painful depending on where the work is done. Its taken me six and a half years to get my mouth fully fixed, grafted, and implanted after losing teeth.
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Yeah, I understand letting skaters play with nagging injuries but I dont understand letting a goalie play if an injury is hampering any part of his game because the other team is going to scope it out and exploit it. It’s fine to be competitive but at some point youre hurting your team.
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What’s really surprising IMHO is that Quick still out played Luongo.Too bad we couldn’t get him the same kind of goal support.
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King John Reply:
April 28th, 2010 at 3:24 pm
@Dominick,
Luongo definitely outplayed Quick, especially as the series progressed. We would’ve won game 6 except for Luongo and Quick.
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Doughty was playing hurt? Wow! What would he have been like in the playoffs NOT hurt? Man, oh man, I can’t wait for next season!
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Why do I have an image of Brownie coming back next season looking like Matt Dillon’s character in Something About Mary with the huge choppers???
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Quick did not outplay Luongo. Except in game one. I guess I just have to assume Murray doesn’t really mean to say Quick was hurt. Because otherwise, that’s f-ed up.
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Also, I don’t buy the whole “I don’t even know when it happened” thing. I would like to know WHY he doesn’t know when it happened. I would like to know when it happened, if Quick kept it a secret, and if Lombardi knew about it.
Seriously, Rich. This seems like a big issue to me.
There would have been no loss of face for Quick if Bernier was called up because Quick was hurt. So that argument is no longer operational. And I don’t think it’s reasonable to think that Bernier in net in games five and six would have led to the same outcome.
As you know, I’m loathe to blame things on coaches or management (or goalies, for that matter). But this strikes me as a potentially huge (series-costing, revenue-costing) error of coaching and/or management.
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I’m very happy Doughty isn’t going to IHF games or whatever they’re called.
I want him well rested and healthy for next year. And with a life long contract in his hands as well.
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