Hurricanes' Chatfield, Walker and Jarvis have no surgery plans for injuries after playoff run
Associated Press
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Carolina Hurricanes players Jalen Chatfield, Sean Walker and Seth Jarvis said Friday they don't plan to have surgery for injuries after the team's playoff run to the Eastern Conference final.
Chatfield missed Carolina's last six games with what the defenseman described as a hip injury, while fellow blue-liner Walker was dealing with an aggravation of a shoulder injury. As for Jarvis, the team's leader in regular-season goals and postseason points, the forward said he plans to work on strengthening and rehabbing a lingering right-shoulder issue for the second straight offseason.
Carolina is the only NHL team with an active streak of winning at least one postseason series for seven straight years, with this year's five-game loss to the reigning Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers marking a third trip to the Eastern final in that span.
Chatfield had missed the closeout game of the second-round series against Washington and then the entire Florida series. The team had never specified the nature of Chatfield's injury, which became a common question for coach Rod Brind'Amour, and he said he should be fine with extra rehab time.
'Just something in the hip,' Chatfield said during Friday's end-of-year player interviews. "It's hard when you get that, trying to skate through that. I just couldn't even get to that speed where I would even be capable of even helping the team on the ice.
'I was able to get back on the ice before the last game and hopefully it was going to be another game or two before I could return. I was super close, for sure.'
Chatfield typically held a second-pairing spot with Dmitry Orlov before his absence, and he scored Carolina's first postseason goal just 2:24 into the opener against New Jersey. Brind'Amour at one point called Chatfield 'day to day' in the most optimistic update during his absence.
'Making it as far as we did and being able to play against Florida, it was tough watching," Chatfield said.
The impact of Chatfield's absence compounded when Walker missed the last three games of the Florida series, his last appearance coming in Game 2 after taking a jarring open-ice hit from A.J. Greer and eventually exiting early. At that point, Carolina was down two of its top six defensemen and playing rookies Alexander Nikishin and Scott Morrow with its season on the brink.
Walker said he had suffered a minor shoulder injury late in the regular season that was improving through the postseason before the Greer hit 'set me back pretty significantly.' He said he was hoping to return if Carolina advanced to the Stanley Cup Final, but didn't need surgery.
Then there's Jarvis, who led Carolina with 10 assists and 16 points in 15 playoff games after tallying a team-best 32 goals in 73 regular-season games. Surgery had been a possibility last year, though he has focused on rehab and strengthening his shoulder.
'We loved where it was at the start of the season, in terms of the health of it and the strength and everything,' Jarvis said. 'Early on it kind of started to slip a little bit, and then kind of re-tore all the work we did on it and all the strength and everything we did. So just dealing with it again wasn't too bad, kind of the same thing as last year.'
Jarvis described the injury as creating more of an issue of pain tolerance than inhibiting on-ice activity — 'I mean, the only difference would be I'd probably be able to throw a real nice spiral,' Jarvis said of surgery — while the protective brace he returned to during the season might prevent him from reaching up to catch a puck.
He played all 15 of Carolina's postseason games, scoring the tying goal in the third period of Game 5 against Florida in what turned out to be the Hurricanes' last of the season.
'This summer, we were dancing around the idea of what to do with it,' Jarvis said. 'The season's gone pretty late, I don't want to miss a lot of time. So I'm going to go with the same protocol as last summer of strengthen it, rehab it. Hopefully maybe wear the brace from the very beginning of the year, and then go from there.'
___
AP NHL playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl
recommended
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
34 minutes ago
- USA Today
Boston Bruins hire former player Marco Sturm as next head coach
Boston Bruins hire former player Marco Sturm as next head coach Show Caption Hide Caption Are Edmonton Oilers Stanley Cup bound? Former NHLer weighs in Former NHL winger Riley Cote explains what he loves about this Edmonton Oilers team ahead of the Western Conference Finals. Sports Seriously The Boston Bruins hired Marco Sturm as their new head coach, the team announced Thursday. Sturm replaces Jim Montgomery, who was fired in November after the team got off to an 8-9-3 start. Assistant Joe Sacco was named the interim head coach and Boston finished 33–39–10, tied for the worst record in the Eastern Conference. For the past three seasons, the 46-year-old Sturm, a native of Dingolfing, Germany, was the head coach of the American Hockey League's Ontario Reign, leading the team to a playoff appearance each season. Sturm has also been an assistant with the Los Angeles Kings and played in 938 NHL games with the San Jose Sharks. Bruins, Kings, Florida Panthers, Washington Capitals and Vancouver Canucks, scoring 242 goals in his career. He scored 106 goals with 87 assists in 302 games over five seasons with the Bruins. "I'm incredibly honored to be named head coach of the Boston Bruins," Sturm said in a statement. 'I want to thank Charlie Jacobs and the Jacobs family, Cam Neely, and Don Sweeney for trusting me with this opportunity. Boston has always held a special place in my heart, and I know how much this team means to the city and to our fans. I've felt that passion as a player, and I can't wait to be behind the bench and feel it again. I'm excited to get to work and do everything I can to help this team succeed."
an hour ago
'Spectacular' Stanley Cup Final Game 1 shows this Panthers-Oilers rematch could be a classic series
EDMONTON, Alberta -- If the series opener of the Stanley Cup Final is a hint of things to come, the Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers are about to give everyone a memorable show. The two best teams in the NHL over the past couple of years traded hits, goals and saves through an instant-classic Game 1 that ended with Leon Draisaitl scoring 19-plus minutes into overtime. It was at the same time tight-checking and also wildly entertaining. Even Panthers coach Paul Maurice on the losing end could appreciate the value of must-see hockey. 'Its potential (is) just a spectacular seven-gamer,' Maurice said 'Up and down the ice, it's still fast. There isn't any casualness. ... It was honest, it was hard, it was fast and it was tight. It was an overtime game.' It had a little bit of everything, from Draisaitl scoring 66 seconds in to Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch unsuccessfully challenging Florida's tying goal by Sam Bennett only to watch Brad Marchand get a power-play goal less than two minutes later. Edmonton rallied from a two-goal deficit to tie it. And Sergei Bobrovsky and Stuart Skinner each made some stops on high-danger scoring chances along the way. 'It's my job to give us a chance to win,' Skinner said. 'I think you've got to give a lot of props to Bob over there, too. He made some fantastic saves, especially in overtime.' There were times the play bogged down, particularly late in regulation and in sudden death OT when two powerhouse teams minimized the risks they were taking. Even for long stretches when the Panthers had the lead, there was not much ice for the Oilers to get through — and they expect more of that moving forward. 'Tight checking," said Mattias Ekholm, who scored Edmonton's tying goal in the third period. 'I think that there's two very experienced lineups with a lot of playoff experience and have been in these situations. Everybody's pretty confident and comfortable in these. I think it's going to be a lot of the same.' Part of what made it masterpiece hockey was how good the Panthers and Oilers are when the pressure is on. Sure, mistakes were made that led to goals, including the puck over the glass penalty in OT, but much of the game was textbook fundamentals. 'The pucks go deep that are supposed to go deep,' Maurice said. 'I think we had one all night we didn't like, maybe two all night that we didn't like our decision of the line. They didn't fool around with it, either.' A year after the Panthers went up 3-0 in the series only to lose three in a row and then defeat the Oilers in a tight Game 7, it's clear these opponents are again evenly matched. That is a recipe for some fun times ahead, with Game 2 Friday night in Edmonton the next chapter of a growing rivalry. 'It's two great teams,' Ekholm said. 'The thing now, too, is we know exactly how they play, they know exactly how we play. It's those little, little details that are going to matter so much in the end. It's one lost coverage for a second here or there, or a penalty like you saw tonight, or whatever it is. It's teams that are also very comfortable in these moments and in these high stake games.'
Hamilton Spectator
an hour ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Hey Maple Leafs fans, Masters champion Rory McIlroy has a message for you
If you look hard enough, you can see the similarities between Rory McIlroy and Toronto Maple Leafs fans. Both are all too familiar with the chase of an elusive title, the pent up emotion from a collapse that always felt inevitable and the demons the pile up as someone else ends up raising the trophy in the end. The major difference, of course, is that McIlroy conquered those demons when he won his first Masters title in April, ending an 11-year major championship drought. Now in Toronto for the RBC Canadian Open , the world's No. 2 ranked men's golfer hopes the Leafs can do the same. 'If I can win the Masters, then the Leafs can win the Stanley Cup,' McIlroy said Wednesday from TPC Toronto at Osprey Valley, according to TSN's Bob Weeks . The two-time winner of the RBC Canadian Open was gifted a Leafs jersey by MLSE CEO Keith Pelley , who used to head the PGA European Tour. Rory McIlroy playing RBC Canadian Open Pro-Am with Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment CEO Keith Pelley (former European Tour chief). Presented Rory with a Maple Leafs jersey. So hey, the Leafs are relevant in June after all. McIlroy's win i n a sudden-death playoff hole at Augusta National made him the sixth golfer with the career Grand Slam. But the 36-year-old wasn't sure if that day would ever come. 'There were points in my career where I didn't know if I would have this nice garment over my shoulders,' McIlroy said after the win, referring to the green jacket. Generations of Leafs fans can surely relate. This year's Game 7 loss to the Florida Panthers in the second round of the playoffs will keep the Stanley Cup drought at 58 years and counting. At last year's Canadian Open, McIlroy told Adam Stanley of Sportsnet that it would be 'amazing' to attend a Leafs game if they were in the playoffs during the 2025 event. The good news for McIlroy and his fellow Leafs fans is, there's always next year.
