- Brad Marchand had surgery on his lingering lower-body injury
- The recovery could run two months or more with camp a month away
- Read below for the video where Marchand explains the surgery
Brad Marchand had the surgery he spent all summer trying to avoid.
George Richards of Florida Hockey Now pegged the recovery at two months or more. That puts the Panthers winger in doubt for the Sept. 29 opener in Carolina, with training camp roughly a month away.
Marchand broke the news himself in an Instagram video, posted to explain why he is pulling out of Zdeno Chara’s “Zee’s Last Shift” charity game on Aug. 21 in Trencin, Slovakia. Watch him deliver it:
He kept it short and never named the injury.
“I won’t be able to make Z’s game. Unfortunately, I had to have a surgery, was trying to fix a problem without surgery, but unfortunately that was unable to happen and had to kind of do it last minute.”
Missing Chara’s send-off stings on its own.
The Trencin game pulled in Jaromir Jagr, David Pastrnak, Anze Kopitar and, of all people, former Chelsea goalkeeper Petr Cech between the pipes. Chara has had an eventful summer in Slovakia, having stopped to give first aid after a cycling accident there earlier this month.
Marchand is believed to have been fighting a hip and sports hernia problem, the same combination he had operated on in Boston. He aggravated it in December, played through it, then landed on LTIR in March once Paul Maurice shut him down.
The 38-year-old still piled up 27 goals and 54 points in 52 games in his first full season in Florida. That was second on the team in goals and fourth in points, and he did it while the Panthers were resting him in spots to keep him healthy for the Winter Olympics.
Surgery was already on his mind in April, when he met with reporters at the team’s closeout day.
“There’s so much time here that we’re not in a playoff position to where we’re going to try and do everything we can to get around it without having surgery. But, yeah, it’s not off the table.”
Check out that April availability:
Cap math turns this into a roster headache. Florida sits about $34,000 under the upper limit, per PuckPedia, so a short absence leaves no room to bring anyone in. Marchand has to miss the first 10 games and 24 days to qualify for LTIR relief, and that call gets made in camp.
A club that missed the playoffs a year after back-to-back Cups does not need another winter of injury news, and Bill Zito already called Carolina the team to beat. Putting Marchand back on the third line with Anton Lundell and Eetu Luostarinen was supposed to be the simple part.
