Alec Martinez suffered his upper-body injury during the first period of a 4-1 win at St. Louis on February 11. Upon returning home from that trip, Head Coach Darryl Sutter said “he’ll be at least a week. At least.” Martinez has been skating on his own but is yet to rejoin his teammates for official practices. He spoke briefly with reporters prior to heading out on the ice at Toyota Sports Center Thursday morning.
On how much longer he expects to be out:
“Hopefully not too much longer. I think it’s been, what, just over a week and a half now?”
On whether it’ll benefit him to get several practices in before playing in a game:
“Yeah. I mean, that’s kind of the case with any injury. You’ve got to be able to get some practice time in, not only from my own standpoint feeling comfortable. Obviously the coaches wane me to get some close-to-game like situations as they possibly can before I get back there. Like I said, I think I’m progressing the way they want me to, so hopefully I’ll be back soon.”
On watching the games on television:
“I watched every one of them on the road. Obviously, Chicago was a tough one. Edmonton and Calgary were good, especially [because] those are two tough road buildings to play in. To get two road wins out of that trip was pretty solid.”
On his encouragement over the young defensemen inheriting his minutes:
“For sure. They’re all really capable players. We’ve got a good hockey club and we’ve got a lot of depth. Over the course of the year stuff like this happens, and you need to be able to tap into that depth pool. I think that we are doing a good job now, and hopefully we can keep it going, especially into tomorrow.”
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