Greene interview

After he finished his session in the kids press conference at Hockey Fest, Matt Greene came in to talk to the media about his recovery from the surgery he had on his left shoulder in July. Greene is expected to miss the first month of the season…

Question: How is the recovery process going?

GREENE: “I think it’s getting better. Every time I talk to the doctors or the trainers, they always say it’s coming along just as they expected. I think I’m on the timeline. I couldn’t tell you what the timeline actually is. They don’t give me the exact dates, but they just say it’s coming along as scheduled.”

Question: Have you been cleared to skate yet?

GREENE: “No, I haven’t been cleared to skate yet. That will probably happen on the first day of camp. I’ll get out there and probably skate by myself, and try to get my conditioning up. Right now they’re just worried about me falling on it and reversing everything they did in the surgery. So I have some time to go with that, but like I said, they’re optimistic about things coming along good.”

Question: Was it one injury, or just a number of things that built up over the years?

GREENE: “I think it was lingering for a while, and then once they got in there, there were some things that were messed up with it. My labrum was torn, and bone spurs, arthritis and the shoulder was out of socket, so they just cleaned up all that stuff, and it’s supposed to be better than I had before. I think this is just from injuries that have been happening — by the way the doctor explained it — since I was in college. So hopefully it’s going to be stronger than what it was before I got hurt, before the surgery, and that’s what I’m looking forward to.”

Question: Is it something that might have been able to be taken care of sooner?

GREENE: “I don’t know. Nobody really knew what was going on until they got in there and took a look at it. There’s nothing you can do about it. The doctors and the training staff did everything they could do, and treated it as well as they could. A lot of it is on me, too. I think, as a player, you always think you can push through it, the little aches and pains, and that’s what I thought it was. They got in there and found it, and I’m just happy they found it when they did, or else maybe the first hit I took in preseason might have put me out for the year, rather than hopefully just the first month of the season.”