Timms knew his season was done
Matt Timms knew the moment he crashed into the boards in the third game of the playoffs his postseason was done.
Timms revealed on Thursday, a day after the Peterborough Petes were eliminated in the OHL Eastern Conference final, he dislocated his shoulder. The original timetable the doctor gave him for a return was six weeks. The club’s leading regular season scorer, Timms sat in the stands and watched his team sweep the Niagara IceDogs and Kingston Frontenacs before bowing out to the Mississauga Steelheads in four games.
“Obviously it sucked,” Timms said. “I got hit there in Niagara and I kind of knew what was going on right away. I remember skating back to the bench saying ‘I’m done, I’m done.’ I was kind of shocked at first and then it hit me, I might be done for the playoffs unless we were going on a Memorial Cup run which, obviously, we had hoped.”
As teams often do in the playoffs, the Petes were pretty covert about Timms true condition calling him day-to-day. Timms was progressing ahead of schedule, though. He resumed skating April 17 and was starting to shoot the puck.
“I was pretty close. I feel like if we’d pushed this a couple of extra games I might have been able to get back in there,” he said. “It sucks being so close and not being able to pull through but it gives me a full summer to rehab and make sure my shoulder is 100 per cent and this never happens again.” It was tough to watch, he said. “The boys competed hard. I felt bad for them because they worked, we just weren’t getting the bounces. We couldn’t really put the puck in the net. It sucks and being in the stands didn’t help very much. I wish I could have been out there battling with the boys.”
On the flip side, Timms is excited about the future of his team which loses some key elements like their three overage players and likely Matt Spencer and Nikita Korostelev but 10 forwards, four defenceman and goalie Dylan Wells are eligible to return if overage players are counted.
“I look at a guy like Pavel Gogolev who was in the press box for most of the playoffs and you see him in practice and what he can do; it shows you the depth we had this year. I know he’s going to make a massive impact next year. I see what he can bring. He got his feet wet and sometimes it takes a year. You see with Zach Gallant and even myself how far we’ve come along from our first two years. There is a real bright future ahead,” said Timms. “I could easily see us competing for the same trophy next year.”
Timms feels like he has unfinished business.
“i wish the season started tomorrow because I watched almost four weeks of hockey where I wasn’t playing,” he said.