Hiding injuries is not a new concept
‘PINOCCHIO ACTS’: Pride in playing for your country often means playing down severity of ailments
To claim that Tyler Seguin lied about his health might be a stretch. But there is no denying he exaggerated the truth concerning the state of his wonky ankle when updating Team Canada officials about his status.
Finally, less than a week before the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, Seguin realized he had to come clean. His healing ankle simply wasn’t good enough yet to allow him to represent his country the way he wanted.
As a result, he told Team Canada officials on Tuesday that he couldn’t go on. Any attempt to do so would be cheating his team, his country and himself.
In the words of coach Mike Babcock: “He came to us and said: ‘I haven’t been very truthful.’”
Within minutes of that statement from Babcock going public, social media blew up with critics lambasting Seguin for allegedly being deceitful. Frankly, that’s going overboard.
Truth be told, this happens all the time. Players constantly are pulling Pinocchio acts, saying they feel fine when they really don’t.
Just ask Babcock, who has seen this act before. Time and time again.
Said Babcock: “I’ve been through a lot of these — 2010, 2014 (Olympics) — and it’s always the same. Guys don’t tell you. Why would they tell you? They want to go. They think they’re going to get better.
“(Seguin) tried to push through it. But even (Tuesday) as he tried to push through it, he said it started heating up. Now I’m not sure what that means in medical terms, but I know in coaching terms that means it’s not very good.”
Seguin suffered a partial tear of his Achilles late last season and missed all but one game of two rounds of playoffs. He had surgery during the off-season and declared himself ready to go for the World Cup three weeks ago.
Obviously he wasn’t, leaving Team Canada having to bring in the Buffalo Sabres’ Ryan O’Reilly as his replacement.
For Team Canada captain Sidney Crosby, the concept of having a player like Seguin downplay an injury in order to play for Team Canada comes as no surprise.
“I think it just tells you how much it means to us to put on this jersey and represent our country,” Crosby said.
“There’s a lot of pride that comes with that. Guys do whatever is needed to play. There’s a lot of examples of that and Seguin is just another one.”
That certainly is the case for John Tavares, who was knocked out of the 2014 Sochi Olympics with ligament damage in his left knee, an injury that caused him to miss the remainder of the 2013-14 NHL season. As devastating as that experience was, Tavares still jumped at the opportunity to join Team Canada again, this time for the World Cup of Hockey.
“You don’t really see any guys pulling out because they don’t want to play, which I think can tend to happen in other sports — even basketball in the Olympics,” Tavares said.
“For us, you look forward to these opportunities because they are very rare. When they come, you want to take full advantage of it.”
While the players are willing to risk being hurt in these international competitions, the possibility of losing a star player to injury leaves NHL general managers with one big throbbing headache.
Indeed, when Tavares’ knee blew out in Sochi, Islanders GM Garth Snow was livid.
“It wouldn’t matter if we were 10 points up on a playoff spot or 10 points out,” an angry Snow told Newsday at the time. “We lost our best player and he wasn’t playing for us.”
Such angst is no different for NHL GMs this time around.
On Tuesday, hours before Hockey Canada announced Seguin would miss the remainder of the tournament, Stanley Cup-winning Penguins GM Jim Rutherford was sitting up in the Consol Energy Center stands watching Crosby practise.
When asked if he had concerns about his franchise player or any other Penguins getting banged up, Rutherford replied: “Constantly.”