John Tavares on the road back to Maple Leafs after devastating injury in playoffs
Anthony Scultore
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John Tavares says he’s “doing great” and appears to be on track for the start of the season. The 30 year-old Leafs center was injured in a freak accident in game 1 of the opening round of the playoffs against the Habs. He missed the remainder of the season as the Maple Leafs went on to blow a 3 games to 1 lead on the road to elimination.
Now, it’s all about a different journey as Tavares continues to progress on his road to recovery.
Tavares suffers devastating injury
The horrifying incident still sends shudders down the spines’ of hockey fans. John Tavares lost his balance after a hit and went down into Corey Perry’s knee. The accidental contact caused him multiple injuries to his head, face, and knee. Tavares also lost consciousness and struggled to get onto a stretcher.
Fortunately, CT scans were conducted and revealed no structural damage to his head, neck, and spine. His loss was felt hard by the Leafs who failed to close out the Habs before losing in 7 games.
“He’s our captain, leader and he comes to the rink every day where he does so much behind the scenes that I don’t think he gets a lot of credit for. We’re going to have to have guys that step in and fill that void and make an impact, but you can’t really replace a guy like that.”
Auston Matthews via NHL.com
After the injury the entire hockey world expressed concerns for Tavares’ well being. He released a statement from the hospital to update his situation.
“The support I’ve felt since last night cannot be put into words. I’m thankful to share that I’m back home and recovering,” Tavares wrote. “Thank you to my family, friends, teammates, the Maple Leafs organization, Leafs Nation and the hockey community for being by my side.”
John Tavares on the mend
Flash forward several months and John Tavares made an appearance on NHL Network to update his status.
“It’s been a great offseason for myself, obviously from a health standpoint, but even more so I think just continuing to get back to work and try to get better and recover well, obviously I think some time really helps,” Tavares said on NHL Network. “I’m really fortunate that it wasn’t anything much more than the incident and I really kind of came out of the hospital and I’ve been doing really well ever since and didn’t really have any hiccups or any issues, just kind of kept building from there.”
theScore
Tavares had a great regular season with 50 points in 56 games. He’s expected to play on the Leafs top two lines and be as productive as usual. For his career, he’s recorded 819 point in 870 regular season contests. The Maple Leafs captain will look to help get his team some playoff series wins and hopefully end their long Cup drought.