Lombardi on Sutter’s hernia surgery

I’m about to spend a few hours in the car, so as I return to Los Angeles and continue updating the progress of various contract negotiations, you should check out some friendly smack talking from Dean Lombardi towards Darryl Sutter regarding the latter’s hernia surgery earlier in the week. For the corresponding audio, skip to 18:55 on the media player.

Dean Lombardi on Darryl Sutter’s recovery from hernia surgery:
“You know what? I don’t want him to get any sympathy at all…He clearly was aware of this last year, and during the lockout he was told to have it taken care of…so not only did he do one of his finest coaching jobs – I can remember how many mornings he’d come in, and he was in pain, but he wouldn’t let anybody know, and I told him at that time, ‘You’ve got no sympathy from me, buddy, because this could’ve been done back in November, but you just didn’t want to do it.’ He was in a lot of pain there this week, but no sympathy. I don’t want you guys giving him any, either. But if you had gone through the year, there were some mornings I know he was hurting, and you talk about players playing injured – I mean this guy was injured, and he was still playing every day and nobody knew. But I remember some times he couldn’t get up. [Reporter: Double hernia surgery?] It’s like ‘It’s going to go away.’ What!? There’s your classic Western Canadian. He’ll fight you right to the end…The other thing, too, he said, ‘Well, I want to set an example to the players that I can play injured, so I want to set an example.’ Hey. Good job. So you’ve proven to your players that you can perform injured. So I don’t want you giving him any sympathy for this when you’re talking to him.”