Pacioretty should heal quickly
Forward had appendectomy on Saturday evening, and is already out of the hospital
“Max just wants to rest. He’s doing better, though, thank God. He’ll be back in no time.”
MAX PACIORETTY’S WIFE, KATIA
While the rumour mill Saturday had the Canadiens figuratively jabbing a sharp object into unsigned defenceman P.K. Subban, a scalpel was going into star forward Max Pacioretty for real.
Pacioretty was admitted to Montreal General Hospital on Saturday evening to undergo an emergency appendectomy. You’ll not be surprised to learn that he was home by noon Sunday, his recovery already nicely underway.
The Canadiens’ 2011-12 top point-scorer didn’t take part in a late-Saturday morning practice in Brossard, scratched with what the team said was a fever and perhaps symptoms of the flu.
As it turned out, Pacioretty wasn’t dealing with anything that mundane. His early prognosis, as communicated on the Habs website at 8:21 p.m. Saturday, put him out of the lineup for three to four weeks.
Pacioretty was in familiar hands at the Montreal General, at least for as short a visit as he made. He was at the General on March 8, 2011, and for several days after that, having that night suffered a bad concussion and a fractured vertebra at the Bell Centre when he was checked into a glass-supporting stanchion by Boston captain Zdeno Chara.
“He just woke up, he’s do- ing better,” Pacioretty’s wife, Katia, told me early Sunday morning, probably unaware that she’d be preparing his lunch at home in just a few hours. “He will heal super fast.
“Max just wants to rest. He’s doing better, though, thank God. He’ll be back in no time.”
For all the anxiety that Katia has lived the past two years, she still has her sense of humour.
“Never a dull moment, that’s for sure,” she joked. “I will definitely go grey soon with all the hospital trips!”
Given Pacioretty’s remarkable recovery from his 2011 injuries — and an inhumanly quick rebound from others he’s suffered during his 205-game NHL career — you half expected to see him taking warm-up for Sunday’s 4-3 overtime win over the New Jersey Devils.
(Remember the James Wisniewski slapshot he took in the midsection in Buffalo in January 2011, after which he was stretchered to hospital with a suspected broken rib, or worse? And that he didn’t miss the charter flight home, a practice or even a single shift?)
But Pacioretty didn’t show the mutant healing factor of comic fame’s Wolverine this weekend. The Canadiens won’t let him near the ice until he’s fully healed in this abbreviated, physically punishing season.
Still, don’t be surprised if the 24-year-old is back sooner than predicted. He underwent minimally invasive, small-incision laparoscopic surgery; to Pacioretty, pretty much any medical procedure not involving a rusty chainsaw or a blunt axe is minor.
No doubt watching at home Sunday night, he would have seen bionic defenceman Andrei Markov score his fourth goal in as many games, his third game-winner, on the power play in overtime.
Not a big deal for Markov, it seems.
“You guys have no idea how much work I’ve done,” the Russian said post-game of not once but twice rehabbing his rebuilt right knee. “I’m just happy to play and enjoy every shift.”
Count goaltender Carey Price among those not surprised by Markov’s brilliance.
“I don’t think anyone ever doubted him in this room,” he said.
“The supporting cast around him is helping and the power play is clicking a bit. He’s a special player.”
Price is having fun, too. His goalposts made at least two saves behind him Sunday; that prompted him to nickname the iron uprights Siegfried and Roy, as did the off-centre netminder in Jay Baruchel’s cult classic hockey film, Goon.
Pacioretty’s surgery has had a trickle-down effect that, despite his unfortunate absence, should serve fans quite a treat. How will the Canadiens now demote Alex Galchenyuk to his junior club, or Brendan Gallagher to the farm in Hamilton?
Almost surely, the phenom Galchenyuk will remain with the Habs, up from the Sarnia Sting. If he plays in Ottawa on Wednesday, the Canadiens’ sixth game, a year will be burned off his entry-level contract.
Rookie pro Gallagher, who scored his first NHL goal on future Hall of Fame goalie Martin Brodeur on a lovely feed from Galchenyuk, seems destined to remain up as well.
(A scary statistic: combined, Gallagher, 20, and Galchenyuk, 18, are about three years younger than Brodeur.)
“Pretty good story for the future,” Gallagher said of scoring his maiden NHL goal on a legendary netminder “I watched (him) when I was growing up.”
The Pacioretty news remarkably bumped to the back burner the melodrama of Subban, who is expected to meet Monday with his agent Don Meehan in Toronto after a weekend reflecting on an alleged two-year offer of $2.2 and $2.9 million.
Some will argue that pact, if true, is paltry, one that undervalues what Subban is worth to the team and much less than what he is seeking.
Those figures would match, to the dollar, the contract recently signed by Rangers defenceman Michael Del Zotto, who often is presented as a comparable to Subban.
Which is a few shades of ridiculous, given what is expected of the two defencemen in the overall scope of their teams.
It’s unclear from where the contract leak came Saturday morning, though it makes sense it’s from the player’s camp in a bid to court a public that is probably even more polarized than when the goaltending debate of Price vs. Jaroslav Halak raged on.
“I can’t comment on that,” Meehan said, asked to confirm or deny the Subban figures. “That would be breaching confidence to all the parties to this process.”
Said Subban, to the same request: “Gotta ask Donnie.”
This is a hugely important contract for Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin, who is setting his team’s bar for future negotiations.
You can only imagine the conversation around the Subban dinner table Sunday night, the defenceman about to sit down with his agent Monday to decide his immediate future.
Subban, while probably not seeing a dollar figure that reflects what he believes he’s worth, must understand the value of getting into uniform and playing a couple seasons of hockey that will give him the combination to the vault next time around.
But that will be Monday’s crisis. On Sunday night, the buzz around the Canadiens was much more about hardluck Pacioretty, unlikely sniper Markov, good-luck Gallagher and Galchenyuk and these great-news Habs, who are proving to be a grand amount of fun to watch.