BOSTON – Zdeno Chara was truly banged up at the end of the Bruins playoff run.
The 42-year-old captain obviously had the two plates and wires in his jaw holding together a pair of fractures suffered in the Game 4 loss to the St. Louis Blues. It was learned on Monday that Chara is also due to have surgery this week on his elbow to remove “loose fragments” from the area, and that recovery timeline will go right along with the weeks its going to take for his fractured jaw to heal as well.
“He’ll have it done this week and move forward, and allow that to recover along obviously with his jaw,” said Bruins GM Don Sweeney. “Every team at that stage deals with injuries. You would think coming out of a 10-day break before the Stanley Cup Final that you’d get healthy, but we weren’t. It just takes time for guys to heal. It takes time when you play 100 games and you have guys push up to the limits, or push beyond the limits, like Zdeno… that’s the obvious one that comes to mind. It’s a testament to the courage of each and every one of them to push through as it was with St. Louis and the other teams we were dealing with.”
Several other Bruins are due for surgery like John Moore set to have his shoulder repaired, and other Bruins like Noel Acciari (heel) and David Backes (undisclosed) are following up with doctors to see if they require surgical repairs. Joakim Nordstrom has a broken navicular bone in his foot that won’t require surgery, and likewise Patrice Bergeron’s groin isn’t going to require surgery to repair either.
Chris Wagner (displaced ulna) had screws and plates in a broken wrist following his blocked shot in Game 3 of the conference final as well, and somehow was trying to work back from that when he practiced ahead of Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final.
“I tried to come back pretty quick. I kind of fought to come back. That was probably the first possible day that I could have been available,” said Wagner. “The next day after surgery I felt so much better because I was in that much pain before. That’s the first bone that I’ve ever broken.”
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