Departing Celebrini helped Tanev stay well
Canucks’ injury-prevention guru jumps ship for job with NBA champs
Rick Celebrini made his mark with the Vancouver Canucks in the prevention and rehabilitation of softtissue injuries.
Hard luck ailments, like a puck to the face or breaking a leg while blocking a shot, tested the medical mettle of the club’s former director of rehabilitation. However, his greatest parting gift to the Canucks — before the 50-year-old Burnaby native officially becomes director of sports medicine and performance for the Golden State Warriors on Sept. 15 — is helping Chris Tanev avoid injury.
The Canucks’ defenceman missed a career-high 40 games last NHL season with five injuries — thumb, groin, puck to the face, leg fracture and knee sprain — but Celebrini is convinced the odds of freak injuries can be reduced.
“Chris was one of my favourite athletes,” Celebrini said Monday. “He’ll put himself in positions that guys might not ever think about. And in doing that, he might be more at risk. We looked at things a little bit differently this summer.
“We made some tweaks, but really the nature of his injuries have been about bad timing or bad luck. He’s that guy who will make a play and take a hit. From just a pure (injury) probability standpoint, he’ll have brighter days ahead, because we’ve been reinforcing deep, balanced positions and maximizing his responsiveness and reaction.
“It’s doing all the things you have under your control. It’s still an unpredictable and quite violent game and you can only do so much. In being aware of body positioning, we can address it technically, but from a hockey perspective, we defer to coaches to make a play or block a shot. That’s not for us to change.”
Tanev, 28, has been the subject of trade talk because of his steady play in his own zone, an ability to transition the puck and an attractive salary-cap hit of US$4.45 million annually for two more sea- sons. He might also be the perfect transition mentor for prospect Quinn Hughes.
The Golden State opportunity is also the perfect job for Celebrini.
After four years with the Canucks — and working in a similar capacity with the MLS Vancouver Whitecaps and as co-founder and partner of Fortius Institute and senior member of the Fortius Sports and Health leadership group in Burnaby — swapping a comfort zone for a bigger challenge was too enticing.
Aside from relocating his wife and four kids, working with a smaller group of athletes with a world-class organization was too good to turn down.
“It was a no-brainer,” added Celebrini. “The ability to focus on 15 athletes instead of 150 — between the Utica Comets, Canucks, prospects, Whitecaps, the residency program and academy — will allow me to do what I love to do, focus on one entity.
“It’s a challenge to jump on a team that’s way better than everyone else by a mile. They realize their core group is aging — at or near the 30-year-old mark — and the challenge is to keep them up there (competitively) and stay healthy.”
Celebrini believed his integrated approach with Jon Sanderson (head athletic therapist) and Roger Takahashi (strength and conditioning coach) best served the Canucks and their players.
“It wasn’t us versus them, as you see in so many professional sports, a sort of a pull or a fractioning between the two entities,” he stressed.
“I’m most proud that the athletes hopefully experienced the benefit that their training programs were woven into injury prevention and rehab.
“But this is a numbers game. We’re responsible for man-games lost, and in that respect, we were not successful. With the soft-tissue and muscle strains we did a really good job, but we had a lot of traumatic injuries that were the result of pucks and contact.”
I’m most proud that the athletes hopefully experienced the benefit that their training programs were woven into injury prevention and rehab.