- Chris Patrick says Rasmus Sandin has been “doing pretty well” in his ACL rehab
- The April 22 surgery came attached to a six-to-nine-month recovery window
- Read below for who holds down Washington’s blue line until he is back
Rasmus Sandin’s knee is trending the right way.
Capitals general manager Chris Patrick was asked for a progress report on his defenseman’s torn ACL, and he sounded encouraged without putting a date on anything.
“Doing pretty well, so hopefully he’ll be on the shorter side of that recovery window, but when we see him when he gets into (training) camp, we’ll have a lot better feel for that,” Patrick told Tom Gulitti of NHL.com.
That window runs six to nine months. Sandin had surgery on April 22 to repair the tear in his right knee, which puts the early end of the range around late October and the far end in late January.
The injury happened on April 11 in Pittsburgh, when Sandin caught a Justin Brazeau hip check and had his season ended a week early. He spent the days after that waiting on test results with no idea how bad it was.
Sandin was asked about the knee at Washington’s locker cleanout, before anyone had told him whether he needed an operation:
“I think it will be quite a bit of rehab over the summer. But how bad and where we will go from here, hopefully, I will find out in the next hours.”
Losing him for a chunk of the year hurts more than the counting stats let on. The 26-year-old averaged 19:12 a night last season and put up 29 points in 73 games before the knee gave out.
Patrick spent July filling the gap. The Capitals signed Vincent Desharnais to a four-year, $16.8 million contract on July 1 and re-signed Timothy Liljegren for two years and $6.5 million after picking him up from San Jose in March.
Cole Hutson is the other name worth tracking here. The 20-year-old put up 10 points in 14 games after leaving Boston University in March, and a long Sandin absence hands him minutes he would otherwise have to fight for.
Camp opens in September, and Patrick said that is when Washington gets its first honest read on where Sandin’s knee actually is.
