Player Discussion Patrik Laine

[BB88]

The Habs press release on nhl.com says Laine has a “left knee sprain”. Just to clear some of the confusion about what that means, here is what the Merck Medical Manual says about sprains:





Overview of Sprains and Other Soft-Tissue Injuries

Btw, the press release didn’t say which knee ligament(s) were torn.

In any case, being out for only 2-3 months is great news. It looked far worse than that.

It has to be mcl, the way the knee bent

 

[BenchBrawl]

Fantastic news!!!

 

[VirginiaMtlExpat]

Honestly, I have no idea how Laine got off so lightly. I'm assuming that the diagnosis was made and confirmed by radiologists with vast experience with knee MRIs. Some of the physicians here like Michou can weigh in.

I was prescient in my comments this summer about the need of the Habs to do more for injury prevention, with a full-time biomechanics expert. Who might look at plays of extreme vulnerability (splitting the defense with AHLers or known thugs), such as ironmen like Suzuki wouldn't do, and wean Habs from these. Who might tweak the boards for a less stiff response. Who would implement training for injury prevention. Who might develop a light, tough prosthetic to better tolerate knee on knees, and so on. Molson certainly can afford one or two.

One more thing that stands out. Develop a human pose estimation based on smart garments and helmets with embedded cameras, designed to withstand shocks, which alert a player of an impending blind side check, such as Greig on Dach. If the player is warned early enough, he rotates away or brings his stick up. If the league tries to outlaw it, then depict it as pro-concussion.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

Great news. Sucks about RB though.

If you’d told me the other day that he’d be the one missing the season with Laine only missing three months I would not have believed you.

 

[RandR]

With Seravalli’s tweet about awaiting opinion of surgery or no surgery combined with Gorton mentioning on the podcast they’re awaiting a 2nd opinion leads me to speculate it’s somewhere towards the worst end of a 2nd degree sprain….

Yea I would guess that too. Btw, at least you are careful to say you are speculating. One thing we saw after the injury on Saturday was that quite a few so-called insiders were posting on X about the severity as if they had some breaking news before anyone else when really all of them were speculating based on at best 2nd hand information. Until the Habs got a 2nd opinion from presumably a specialist I would think nobody really knew what the prognosis was.

 

[RandR]

It has to be mcl, the way the knee bent

I would think so too, given also that from the little I know about such things, ACL injuries have a longer recovery time.

I don’t blame the Canadiens for not releasing any information until there was some sort of certainty about the diagnosis; however I don’t see any good reason why they couldn’t be more specific than just calling it a sprain. Why not say “2nd degree MCL sprain”? (assuming that’s what it is) even if they aren’t completely certain about the timeline for return to play.