Fighting a hangover

VANCOUVER - Ryan Kesler will miss the start of the season for the Vancouver Canucks, but that's not the most worrisome news.

He's not skating regularly, as he recovers from mid-summer hip surgery, and he probably won't get a lot done at training camp by the sounds of it.

"My original goal was (to return) for the beginning of the season, but I'm not going to set a time frame," he said on Friday, as Canucks players arrived at Rogers Arena for their medicals. "My main goal is to get back to 100-percent health. However long that takes, it's really up to my hip."

Does he believe he can be ready in time for Game 1?

"To be honest, I don't really know."

The recipe for a Stanley Cup hangover includes, in equal parts, a shortened summer of training, and injuries that carry over from the Cup final into the new season.

If the Canucks players are anything like the media that gathered at Rogers Arena Friday, they're feeling like it was about a week ago that they walked out into the smoke and haze of the Vancouver Cup riot.

And on the injury front, head coach Alain Vigneault revealed that both Kesler and Mason Raymond, who suffered that horrific back injury on his first shift of Game 6 against Boston, are both out "indefinitely."

What does that mean, you ask? Just what it sounds like: The Canucks don't know for sure, and what they do know they're not telling you.

"It's a long process, an everyday thing," Kesler said of his hip rehab. "It's very important that I do my rehab and everything correctly, and come back and help the team. In the meantime, I don't want to be a distraction."

On one hand we think, Kesler is such a workhorse and the Canucks could win the weak Northwest Division in their sleep. Why wouldn't you just tell him to shoot for a Nov. 15th return and be done with it?

But then you think about other players who miss training camp, and the first couple of months of a season - after summertime surgeries. Those guys are never any good until some time in February - and sometimes they don't ever catch up.

So perhaps Vancouver's chances of avoiding the "year-after malaise" is to have as regular a lineup as possible right from the start. They're already without defenceman Christian Ehrhoff and his 50 points, as GM Mike Gillis chose to keep Kevin Bieksa instead, and couldn't re-sign both. And Raymond could still be out long-term.

Also, third-line centre Manny Malhotra will be a question mark, as he starts his first season with depleted vision in is left eye after it was injured last season. He has been cleared to practice but not for contact as camp opens in earnest on Saturday, and Malhotra admits that his eye isn't what it used to be - yet.

"I've got to push myself, within reason," Kesler said of his rehabilitation program. "Everybody knows the way I play. I'm not going to help the team if I'm not 100 percent. That's my goal: to get to 100-percent health, and be bigger and stronger than last year. By no means am I going to limp my way into the season."

Nor will his team, though that's exactly what the Chicago Blackhawks said last season.

When you play an 82-game regular season, followed by 25 more in the playoffs, you show up at the rink in September and sometimes think, "Man, did I ever leave this place?"

But Vigneault will hear none of it.

"It's not going to be difficult at all," Vigneault said of avoiding the drop in intensity. "We've got a very professional group that understands the points that are available in October are as important as the points that are available in March and April. This group understands what needs to be done.

"I've met each player individually here, as I always do before training camp, and I'm hearing and I'm sensing the same things that I have been in my five years prior. They are very motivated; they know what needs to be done; and they're anxious to go out there and work really hard."

They're saying the right things. We'll know by Dec. 1 if the Vancouver Canucks are able to walk the walk.

Mark Spector is the senior columnist on sportsnet.ca