Lidstrom returns to playoffs after testicle surgery!

He only missed one game too. Crazy.


http://freep.com/article/20090616/COL22/906160360/You+cringe+when+you+hear+of+pain+Wings+endured


You don't have to be Allen Iverson to think speared testicles are a good reason to skip practice. - Michael Rosenberg

 

Something to remember the next time we have a, "which sport's athletes are the toughest." Hockey players are insane.

 

I'm not a big hockey guy but I heard this once:

When baseball players are hurt they miss two weeks.
When basketball players are hurt they miss a week.
When football players are hurt, they miss a game.
And, when hockey players are hurt, this miss a shift.

(Sidebar: Two words that should never be used in conjunction in the English language: "speared testicles.")

 

Brian Rafalski, who plays alongside Lidstrom on the blue line, felt pain in his back one day and figured it would go away. The next day, Rafalski couldn't walk. He had a herniated disk. Five games and two epidurals later, he was back on the ice.

"I sort of learned to live with it," Rafalski said. "I had a little tingling down my leg, some numbness."

Just as Rafalski learned to play with an injury that would keep a lot of people out of a desk job, he separated his shoulder. I asked him what grade the separation was. He said he didn't know. He never asked.

"Doesn't matter," he said. "Here's some pills. Get out there and play. Luckily it's my top hand so I could still shoot."

Despite these injuries, Rafalski and Lidstrom mostly contained Sidney Crosby in the Stanley Cup finals. They were each plus-11 in the playoffs.

"We did play well," Lidstrom said. "But I don't think we contributed offensively as much as we could have."

And yet, when I asked Lidstrom which Wings impressed him most with their toughness in the playoffs, the first name he mentioned was Dan Cleary. Lidstrom said Cleary had "two partial tears in his groin." Every stride on the ice must have been excruciating for Cleary. He played every game, scored 15 points and was plus-17.

Guts.

Hockey and box lacrosse players (often the same people) have it in spades.

If you can't or don't want to play hurt, don't play at all.

JR's sig line, a recent quote from Brendan Shanahan, sums it up nicely:

"In the last couple of weeks here I had my lip split open, my chin split open, I got stitches in my eyelid and I got hit so hard in Game 6 that it actually knocked one of my false teeth out. And I loved every minute of it."

 

How badly was Crosby injured in the final game?

He only took one shift in the third period, so it had to be pretty bad. Yet he still did come out for that one shift regardless of how hurt he was.

 

The other thing that adds to hockey's culture is that thanks to the code of silence (which only intensifies during the playoffs), you never hear about these kind of injuries until weeks later.

 

It's an NHL policy

Injuries can only be classified as "lower body" such as a speared testicle or "Upper body" such as fractured skull.

 

That's a ballsy move by Lidstrom.

 

Until the Pens revealed after Game 6 that Petr Sykora - he of the

while hoisting the Cup (but, honestly, who could blame him? ) - had broken his foot and was "questionable" for Game 7.

Interesting Sykora fact, by the way - he has played in five Stanley Cup finals, winning twice. Three of those five series went all seven games. The first two occasions (2001 with New Jersey, 2003 with Anaheim), he dressed and played in Game 7 and his team lost. This year, of course, with him out of the lineup due to his Game 6 injury, his team won.

His other Cup win was in Game 6 in 2000 with New Jersey.....after he was knocked out of that Game 6 with an injury.

It makes you think.......if he could've just gotten kneecapped in Game 6 of last year's final, the Pens would have won that game and taken the Cup a year earlier.

 

I understand that. I also understand why (that releasing the exact nature of injuries can be tantamount to putting a target on a player's jersey).

What I'm saying is that this only adds to what has become the culture of hockey. The only reason teams mention injuries at all (i.e. upper body, lower body, etc.) is because the league mandates them to release such info.

It wasn't that long ago (or maybe it was) that teams wouldn't mention anything about injuries during the playoffs (and were pretty tight-lipped about them during the regular season).

 

Dr VN

You're right. I misunderstood.

Unless there was an obituary in the local paper, you'd never find out someone's condition prior to the imposition of this stupid policy.

 

Don't put this in the "What I wouldn't give for a Stanley Cup" file. Obviously, it wasn't enough, even considering they almost always come in pairs.