Tomorrow, I will have a Meltzer's Musings blog on the Flyers' unexpected struggles on home ice in the second half of this season, as well as looks at restricted free agents Andreas Nodl and Darroll Powe.
Earlier today, Chris Pronger did a conference call about his back surgery. The full transcript follows, courtesy of Flyers' PR assistant Brian Smith:
Q: How did the surgery go and how are you feeling?
”Well, as far as I was told it went very well. It relieved a lot of the weakness I was having in my leg and now it is just a matter of how the nerve regenerates itself and the range of motion and all the rest of that stuff. How it recovers and that stuff are probably another four to five weeks before we see where that is at.”
Q: Can you tell us about the decision to have the surgery, was that an option you were given or was it pretty clear you had to have it?
“It was an option, but in order for me to try and play hockey again it was pretty cut and dry. I could have went through the whole summer rehab and you know, get another steroid injection and see if that calms the nerve down, but it was a pretty bad herniated disc. The odds of it becoming an issue again were very high. In my estimation it wasn’t really that high of a chance of not having the surgery done if I wanted to play anymore.”
Q: Was this the first time you’ve had issue with your back? I didn’t notice any other problems that you have had in your career.
“No, this is the first time I have ever really had any real problems with my back, obviously you get sore and whatever, but any serious or medical issues, no this is the first time.”
Q: Did the doctors say you were going to be back at full strength or is this going to reduce your play at all?
“Well, like anything else, especially with the back, there’s no guarantee. That was one of the things we wanted to find out when I went and met with the doctor and what his recommendations are and what he has seen. Everybody is different and everybody recovers differently and you hope that you’re able to recover a hundred percent, but that’s never a guarantee and you never know. It’s still very early to be able to tell that. I won’t know that until probably training camp or maybe even further on, who knows.”
Q: But you do expect to start the season, right?
“I don’t know. As I said, today is day fourteen post surgery, so again I’m not going to know. I go back for another check up in three to four weeks and then you know ill begin to start rehab and I don’t know. I can’t tell you. I’m not Kreskin, I can’t look into the future and tell you what’s going to happen or not happen. Time is really all you can, time and patience, which I know you guys don’t have a lot of.”
Q: You’re a big Kreskin fan, huh? A couple times you’ve mentioned it.
“Yeah, you’re on the ball, sir. I like it. I may throw it out there a few more times depending on the questions you guys give me.”
Q: I know you’re not a doctor but for the laymen and all… from how I understand it there’s an extrapolation up against your nerve. What did they do to repair it? Did they remove it or shave it?
“Actually, I think they cut it, trim it, whatever terminology you want to use, shave it. I’m not sure of the exact term that you can use. Basically, they removed the impingement that is pushing against the nerve root in order to alleviate, we can call it vibrations, sensations, weakness that you have in your leg and you hope that that nerve. You know the reason you want to do it as quickly as possible from what I got from my meeting with the doctor was you don’t want the nerve exposed to that too long. It just creates more and more damage and you want that nerve to be able to regenerate so that you can get as much strength back as possible.”
Q: Is it similar to the surgery Michael Leighton had?
“I have no idea.”
Q: A couple guys on your team said that even though you guys were eliminated two rounds earlier this year they actually think that you are closer to a Stanley Cup right now then you were last year. Do you agree with that assessment?
“Yeah, I think when you look at the strides that some of our younger guys have made. You look at how Claude Giroux improved immensely this year. Look at James van Riemsdyk from the beginning of the year and how he finished the year, he made leaps and bounds in how he played. You know, you look at things like that, as we all know a lot of what happens for teams is the health factor and how guys are. Last year we were fairly healthy, especially on the back end we were real healthy. We obviously went through a ton of goalies through injury and up front we had a number of guys hurt, but if we can stay healthy next year I certainly feel we definitely have a chance just like we did this year and I thought we did last year as well.”
Q: Chris, do you think that it is important for this team to get a goalie and bridge that gap for [Sergei] Bobrovksy?
“Well as we all know, it’s never easy. When I was in St. Louis, it was always we need to get a goalie, we needed to get a goalie, we needed to do this, we needed to do that. They don’t grow on trees, even the ones you get you never know. You just don’t know. Sometimes they work out, sometimes they don’t. That’s the difficult part of it. What do you have to give up to get one? What are the ramifications for your team? Again, that’s above my pay grade, I don’t know what we’re going to do, who you’re going to get, or how you are going to get them. That’s for management and ownership to decide what they’re willing to do. You could go get whoever, you name a guy, you could go get him. It’s not a guarantee that you’re going to win. Which seems to me that you guys think you go get a goalie and all of a sudden you win. It’s not that easy.”
Q: Do you think it would have been a different series if you had played against the Bruins?
“I don’t know. You know what, I’d like to think so, but I don’t know. I am not going to look into the past and say could’ve, should’ve, would’ve. We lost plain and simple. I didn’t play, I was hurt. End of story. You guys have got to cut the cord and move on. No more armchair quarterbacking.”
Q: How much time do you feel like you have left in your body?
“Well again, I don’t know. I felt good when I played this year. That the funny thing, every time I started to feel better and started to get my feet underneath me and get back into the grove, I had another injury. You talk about the other season, I basically missed the whole season, I played five games and I had my wrist issue where I had reconstructive surgery on my wrist.
Mentally I feel like I can play. When I was healthy, my play speaks for itself. It’s a matter of staying healthy. This year was very tough, every time I turned around I had another injury. It wasn’t like it was a bump and a bruise, it was something broken that needed surgery to fix. That can be a little disappointing and frustrating, when you know you can still play at a high level and your play speaks to that and you’re not able to go out and play. That’s tough, especially when you feel like you can add another element to the team when you’re out there. Mentally I’ve got a lot left, it’s how my back feels.
Basically, if the surgery works and I am able to train properly and get healthy, I don’t see why I can’t continue to play as long as I want, as long as everything else holds up.”
Q: Did you feel an immediate impact from that surgery? Did you feel relief right away?
“I did, yeah. I no longer had the burning sensation and the shooting pain down my leg was gone. Obviously you can’t move all that much, they don’t want you bending, twisting, doing all the rest of that stuff. You’ve got to let the back heal up. Obviously it’s a very sensitive area with nerves and all the rest of it. So, you’ve got to be very careful. You want to make sure you don’t want to rush things like this. You want to make sure you have all summer, training camp, the start of the year.
I don’t know when I will be healthy, when it will be back. I hope it comes back and it’s a hundred percent, but I want to make sure I take my time and rehab it properly and do all the things necessary to make sure that it is a hundred percent when I do come back and there’s no issues moving forward after that.”
Q: How is the rehab for the back going to affect the rehab you do for your hand? Can you do one while you’re waiting to start on the other?
“I am actually doing that right now, as we speak. I’ve got different things that I do on the days when I am not doing hand therapy with a hand specialist. Just continue to try to gain strength back and work on my hand to try to get it back to where it needs to be to play the game properly. It’s the same answer basically for my back, time heals most wounds. I am sure a long summer of rehab and what not will get that back to where it needs to be play at a high level, hold my stick, and do all the rest of those things that way I need to be a good hockey player.”
Q: It requires a lot of patience doesn’t it?
“It does, it does. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of patience in order to kind of go through the different steps to reach each hurdle. As you progress in the rehab protocol, you’ve got to hit a hurdle and then you go to the next one. It takes time, you can’t just jump back in to things you want to do. While you may want to do those things, you’ve got to just buy your time and be patient and just work through the various steps that have been put in place, kind of gauge yourself. You’re going to feel good but you just got to gauge it. A lot of times you’ve got to tap down a little bit and slow yourself down; you get antsy. It was a tough year, but I want to be able to use this time to make sure I’m healthy when I come back.”
Q: Has the doctor given you a time table for when you can start skating? I think he said in about four weeks you would be doing some things, but is that skating or do you know what’s next for that part of it?
“Again, Sam, I am going to say it one last time, patience. Time, we got lots of time. I don’t know when I am going to be able to skate. I didn’t even ask, that was the last thing on my mind. There are a lot of hurdles that I need to cross before I can begin skating and all the rest of that stuff. I can’t really do anything for six weeks, not four. So, once I go and get checked up, I will be able to get the Q and A on the progressing further along and begin my rehab.”
Q: Have you been watching the NHL Playoffs? Are you finding yourself rooting for anybody in particular, maybe a former teammate, anything like that?
“I have not watched, I have watched some highlights, but I haven’t been watching too intently. I have not been rooting for anyone, just rooting for long series. I want every series to go seven.”
Q: At the end of the season, Paul [Holmgren] said he couldn’t figure out why this team didn’t play as well as it did the first half of the season. Do you have any thoughts about that at all?
“I don’t. You know, I think everybody would have liked to get better as the season progressed and those are the teams that usually progress further into the playoffs. I think we’ve seen that with the four teams that are in the conference finals. All four of those teams got better as the season went along and that’s what you need to do be successful is playing your best hockey at the right times, and we weren’t. That is something for whatever reason we didn’t do. I don’t think I have an answer for why. I know you’ve got a lot of opinions on it. I couldn’t give you the answer as to why.
There’s going to be 29 other teams in the same boat as us. So, it sucks. You set out to have a goal and you don’t achieve that goal it’s very disappointing. There are always arm chair quarterbacks, there’s always people looking in, looking for excuses or answers as to why this happened, that happened. At the end of the day, we didn’t get the job done. We’ve got to use the summer properly and make sure we are ready to go for September, whatever the start of camp is 15th or 16th, make sure once we set foot on the ice, we’re focused and understand what we need to do to be successful and follow through on that.”
Q: Coming off that, a lot of fingers were pointed at Mike Richards, I am sure you have heard some of the things that were said about him.
“I have not. I have not. I have a simple answer for you. When a team wins, players get pats on the back or get all the credit. That’s usually your captain, your goalie, all the rest of that. When you lose, whether it’s fair or unfair, the people that get criticized are your captain, and your goalie, and all the way down the line. This is a team sport and for you to be successful you need everyone around you to play well. Whether it’s Richie, Carts, myself, Kimmo [Timonen], Boosh, Bob; I mean it’s not just one guy. People can say whatever they want about Richie, but at the end of the day you have to realize it’s a team sport.
Actually I did see one, is Sam Donnellon on the call? He’s not? I saw one headline, ‘Should Mike Richards step away for a year from the C.’ What good does that do? That is the most ridiculous thought I have heard yet. This is on the job training for Mike. I was brought in to help him be a captain and do all the rest of that and kind of help with my experiences. I think I got here, he was 24, he’s now 26. I think he’s made some strides. Everybody does things their own way. I wasn’t always this vocal with the media or this patient. It takes time, you have to have those experiences.
I think when you go through tough times, maybe this is one of them for him, you learn an awful lot about yourself, you gain a lot of experience. This game and life is not easy. Nothing in life worthwhile is easy. If it was, everyone would be able to do it. You learn how to handle different situations and it only makes you better as a player and a person, because you can always look back on those tough times and [know] I was able to come through those with my head held high and better. So will Mike.
I went through them as a young captain; I went through them as a player. Getting booed, getting mouthed off walking out of the rink and wanting to fight guys after games and all the rest of it. It’s not easy, especially on a team when the expectations are this high and the fans are this passionate. The media, you guys are bickering with one another trying to get the scoops. It’s not easy. I think as his career progresses, he is going to understand more and more what the media’s job is, and just to give you guys a little, just a little bit, just a little taste. Which is what I do, just give you a little taste. You don’t have to give it all, just enough so you guys can do your job and leave him alone. That’s all experience.
I think it’s a little ridiculous to be blaming one person. We win as a team and lose as a team – period, end of story.”
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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