A good sign: Couture seeing improvement from injury
SAN JOSE >> Logan Couture is improving, Sharks coach David Quinn said, but there's still no indication when both he and Tomas Hertl will be able to return from their respective lowerbody injuries.
Couture missed his third straight game Saturday night when the Sharks hosted the Columbus Blue Jackets after he recently had a recurrence of an injury, osteitis pubis, that kept him out for all of training camp and the entire first half of the season.
Quinn said Couture, 34, remains week to week, adding, though, that he can walk. Couture said last month that when his injury was at its worst late last year, he wasn't able to even get out of bed or play with his young son, now just over six months old, at home.
“He's getting better, so that's a good sign,” Quinn said of Couture. “So, he's shut down until he feels better to get back out there.
“He's getting dressed, he's getting out of bed. He's picking his son up.”
Hertl was expected to miss several weeks after he elected to have surgery to remove loose cartilage in his left knee on Monday. At the time, Sharks general manager Mike Grier said in a statement the timetable for Hertl to return would be determined,
“based on the findings of the procedure and his rehabilitation.”
Quinn didn't have an updated timeline on Hertl and estimated that it could be another week before more is known. There is still optimism that Hertl can return before the end of the regular season in April.
Hertl dealt with the knee issue on and off this season but aggravated the injury in a Jan. 27 game against Buffalo as he absorbed a hit from Sabres defenseman Henri Jokiharju. With Hertl already playing in some discomfort, the hit, Quinn said recently, “kind of brought it a little bit to a new level.”
Hertl missed the last two Sharks games at the end of last month but wanted to be a part of the NHL AllStar Game's festivities in Toronto, where he, his wife, and their two young sons met his parents, who had never been to Canada before.
After Saturday's game, the Sharks host the Vegas Golden Knights on Monday, the Nashville Predators next Saturday, and the New Jersey Devils and Anaheim Ducks on Feb. 27 and 29, respectively.
Without Couture and Hertl, the Sharks lost 1-0 to the Winnipeg Jets on Wednesday before they beat the Calgary Flames 6-3 the following night. That night, Filip Zadina had four points and Justin Bailey added three as the Sharks improved to 6-4-2 since the end of a 12-game losing streak last month.
“They're just such anchors for us down the middle,” Sharks center Ryan Carpenter said of going without Couture and Hertl for a potentially extended period. “It's their leadership too, right, and just the way they play the game. They play a 200-foot game and they just have so much experience and just their presence in the locker room brings so much for us.
`It's kind of been like this all year with guys being in and out, and it seems it's a lot of our guys that play a lot of minutes, too, especially on offense. So, nothing new to us, it's like the next man up mentality.”
NO TRANSACTIONS: >> Couture remained on the Sharks' 23-man roster as of Saturday afternoon, and forward Givani Smith and defenseman Henry Thrun remained on injured reserve. Smith and Thrun have been regular participants in practices since the end of the Sharks' bye week and were on the ice again Saturday morning.
Forward Kevin Labanc and defenseman Nikita Okhotiuk will both went back into the lineup Saturday and Jacob MacDonald and Kyle Burroughs came out. Labanc's last game was Jan. 16 in Chicago, as he had been a healthy scratch for the last eight games.