So what if we don’t know exactly who’s hurting where while the games are on? It’d only ruin the post-series fun.
There are plenty of annual traditions to enjoy in the NHL post-season. The playoff beard. The overtime thriller. The Edmonton Oilers watching on TV.
One of the most enduring customs is the Cloak of Vague that is lowered to shield details of player injuries. Coaches enjoy this because it makes them feel like secret agents keeping critical intel from enemy hands. The parameters of public discussion are limited: It’s either an “upper-body injury” or a “lower-body injury.”
For fans, knowing the geographic coordinates of a player’s affliction—plus or minus three feet—is a pretty useless piece of information. Sure, it sounds as though you’re being told something useful, but you’re not. It’s like every minute of Don Cherry talking, ever.
What do we really know about someone who has suffered a “lower-body injury”? We know that he has an injury of some kind, of some severity, to his knee or ankle or thigh or calf or shin or groin or hip or buttocks or foot or toe or other toes. It would be equally illustrative—and far more entertaining—for coaches to classify a player’s injury as either a “boo-boo” or an “ouchie ouch.” Yet the tradition continues. To this day, NHL sources are willing to confirm only that, upon attending the theatre, Abraham Lincoln suffered an upper-body injury.
Our other delightful injury tradition occurs the day after the end of every playoff series, at which point members of the losing team reveal the true extent of their many wounds and ailments. Understand something: They don’t do this to make excuses for losing. NO SIREE. They’re simply putting forth a reason or explanation to justify or explain away a fault or failure, which is the dictionary definition of “excuse,” but so what because MY WITTLE FINGER HURTED THE WHOLE TIME!
The best example from the first round of this year’s playoffs came courtesy of the Montreal Canadiens, whose speedy five-game exit at the hands of the Ottawa Senators was followed by a recitation of physical maladies so extensive and detailed that it pretty much qualifies as the script for The Expendables 3.
Below you’ll find a comprehensive list of the injuries with which the Canadiens were apparently playing:
Max Pacioretty: Separated shoulder.
Brian Gionta: Torn biceps tendon.
Brandon Prust: Separated rib, injured shoulder.
Ryan White: Injured shoulder, punctured lung.
Tomas Plekanec: Sore groin.
P.K. Subban: Inflated ego.
Colby Armstrong: Post-Slurpee brain freeze.
David Desharnais: Played with a profound existential dread that the puck represented the absence of existence, a black void into which all hope, love and human consciousness is drawn and forever extinguished—leaving behind only a malevolent darkness that will endure through all eternity. Also had, like, two hangnails.
Travis Moen: Worst. Hiccups. Ever.
Brendan Gallagher: Diagnosed with exploding spine syndrome.
Josh Gorges: Third-degree limblessness.
Alex Galchenyuk: Unbeknownst to fans and the media, he played most of game five with a disembodied soul.
Jeff Halpern: Middle-body injury.
Rene Bourque: Stigmata.
Raphael Diaz: Played games three to five with his index fingers caught in a Chinese finger trap.
Michael Ryder: Disco fever.
Andrei Markov: Felt fine the whole time, actually. Thanks for asking.
