Ryan Nugent-Hopkins will fly to Cleveland today to have his shoulder examined. Surgery is likely, will miss remainder of season.
— Edmonton Oilers (@EdmontonOilers) April 21, 2013
RNH says the specific shoulder injury is a labral tear
— Edmonton Oilers (@EdmontonOilers) April 21, 2013
You'd think someone would have learned something from last year
A labral tear. This looks awfully familiar.
Ah yes, it's all coming back to me now, as it should you.
If it's a labral tear, than it's the exact same injury that Taylor Hall suffered from. Management's decision to shut Nugent-Hopkins down comes about three weeks later than it did for Taylor Hall this time last year. (To see an animation of what a shoulder labral repair surgery looks like, click here. While it is true that I am not a doctor, it appears to be a little more involved than getting your tonsils out.)
Rehab will likely fall into the six months-plus time frame. If he gets surgery sometime next week, we'd be looking at a conservative estimate of late October, which is two or three weeks into next year's schedule. Taylor Hall took a little over seven months from surgery to ice time, so it wouldn't at all shock me if we didn't see Ryan Nugent-Hopkins in an Oiler jersey until November or later.
WHY wasn't this addressed sooner?
It's not like the team hasn't seen one of these before. This appears to be the EXACT SAME SITUATION that Taylor Hall faced last year. Hall suffered his shoulder injury against the Avalanche five months prior to his surgery. Nugent-Hopkins' shoulder has been a question mark since he began the season in Oklahoma City. He was a question mark for the World Juniors. Today, the worst kept secret in the world is released.
Was the plan to wait until the team was mathematically eliminated from the postseason before any decisions were to be made? Was the plan to keep Nugent-Hopkins in the lineup so that the team could triumphantly march into the playoffs, thereby saving Steve Tambellini's job?
Mission accomplished. Again. Great job, everyone.
An injured Ryan Nugent-Hopkins doesn't make this team a playoff team, as evidenced by the product produced. This is now the second time in as many seasons that management has willingly and purposefully held off getting one of the kids fixed in order to ride out the season.
Surely, a team that's banking so hard on the future would take better care of those assets in order to see a payout.
Then again, you'd think they might have learned something from the way Taylor Hall's injury was handled last year.