Connor McDavid injured vs. Blue Jackets, won't return (upd: back after missing 3 games)

McFlyingV

Registered User
Feb 22, 2013
23,902
16,035
Edmonton, Alberta
He must not have had a high ankle sprain then? Glad to see him back soon and hope he gets into the scoring race ASAP.
Him returning really doesn't show he didn't have a high ankle sprain. I think people really don't understand that a sprain of any kind is on a spectrum and the "timelines" provided are very general and not always consistent from person to person and the varying severity of the sprain. For example a grade 2 sprain or partial tear can essentially mean ~10% of the ligament is torn, or it can mean 90% of the ligament is torn, and the healing timelines for those are going to be drastically different.

So my guess is he had a high ankle sprain (or a deltoid ligament sprain, albeit less likely in a skate) and the imaging showed there was no significant damage (grade 1 sprain), but his ankle was quite swollen the first couple days and so they put out a "typical" recovery timeline, and then the swelling went down, the pain improved, the function came back, and because there was likely nothing overly concerning on the imaging he's deemed safe to play because his symptoms resolved. That is how rehab actually works in cases where there is not enough structural damage to something that it is deemed risky to play through. You return when your symptoms improve and when you can perform physical demands of your sport without aggravating it.
 
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authentic

Registered User
Jan 28, 2015
26,312
11,291
Him returning really doesn't show he didn't have a high ankle sprain. I think people really don't understand that a sprain of any kind is on a spectrum and the "timelines" provided are very general and not always consistent from person to person and the varying severity of the sprain. For example a grade 2 sprain or partial tear can essentially mean ~10% of the ligament is torn, or it can mean 90% of the ligament is torn, and the healing timelines for those are going to be drastically different.

So my guess is he had a high ankle sprain (or a deltoid ligament sprain, albeit less likely in a skate) and the imaging showed there was no significant damage (grade 1 sprain), but his ankle was quite swollen the first couple days and so they put out a "typical" recovery timeline, and then the swelling went down, the pain improved, the function came back, and because there was likely nothing overly concerning on the imaging he's deemed safe to play because his symptoms resolved. That is how rehab actually works in cases where there is not enough structural damage to something that it is deemed risky to play through. You return when your symptoms improve and when you can perform physical demands of your sport without aggravating it.

Good to know, yeah it’s just usually when you hear high ankle sprain in the case of hockey players I can’t recall a time when the player wasn’t out atleast a month.
 

ijuka

Registered User
May 14, 2016
23,156
16,377
They keep rushing McDavid back before he's ready. Now I predict he's going to play terribly for several months because of his lingering injuries, and the team will be far worse off than if he had just rested for an extra week or two and came back actually healthy.

NHL has an atrocious culture with injurise that's in dire need of a reform. It shouldn't be idealized that players play through injury. It should be considered idiotic, which it is, and the players should be forced to stay away until healthy, instead of coming up with any excuse to get them to play as quickly as possible, leading to most teams having at least 75% of their active rosters permanently injured.
 

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