“It was every day I had to go to the gym and I hated it,” the Tampa Bay Lightning forward said.
The Lightning would win, he’d be in the dressing room, a part of it yet completely distant from it.
“It is pretty remarkable what he’s been able to do after really nothing, not playing at all for a full season, really wasn’t on the ice much until the very end of the season,” Tampa Bay center Blake Coleman said.
“Hockey players, their shelf life is their 20s, and if you’re lucky you get to play into your early 30s now, and if you lose a whole year that’s got to be tough,” Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said.
Kucherov tried to help his teammates when he could, talking to them before and after games, giving tidbits of information from what he was seeing.
Without the salary cap relief, they would have had to do some roster overhauling to become compliant before the season began.
BriseBois said the NHL investigated Kucherov’s long-term injured reserve situation and approved it based on the justification for the surgery and the appropriate timelines from recovery to rehab to return to play.
“Missing a whole year, you ask any player, you don’t want to be that guy,” Kucherov said.
“I didn’t know how things would unfold,” BriseBois said.
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