How do long-term injuries impact dressing room chemistry?
In hockey, as in every sport, injuries and illnesses are an unfortunate part of the game. A prolonged absence obviously impacts a player’s ability to contribute to his team’s on-ice performance, but what often gets overlooked is how the player’s ability to contribute to his team off the ice gets affected.
Usually, recovery is brief and is measured in days or weeks, and the player can stay in a regular routine around the club without really missing a beat. However, if the injury or illness is significant enough to keep a player sidelined for a significant portion, or all, of a season, the player’s ability to remain an integral part of the team is challenged much more.
Injured players don’t travel with the club, so they are automatically isolated from the team dynamic for about half the time. Missing the little bonding interactions that happen during team meals and bus rides creates a disconnect that is hard to recapture later. Then, when the team is at home, injured players often spend more time in the training room than the dressing room. It can be a lonely and frustrating experience.
Players on the long-term injured reserve list are still part of the group from a camaraderie perspective, but it’s a bit like seeing an old work colleague that isn’t with the company anymore. They aren’t living the shared experience of their teammates in the same way they would if they were fighting the battles game in and game out. As a result, even veteran leaders are ultimately forced to take a step back into the shadows, watching helplessly as their teammates persevere without them.
It isn’t something you can quantify or predict accurately, but dressing rooms can be fragile ecosystems. Add or remove a guy at the wrong time and you risk disrupting a team’s balance or its day-to-day environment. It’s why trade deadline acquisitions can be so risky. Sometimes it’s a seamless fit and other times, it throws a team off-kilter and it can’t find its way.
That fragility can be very evident when a veteran presence is removed from a dressing room due to injury or illness. The change in dynamic can have a big effect on the team’s chemistry, and in turn, its on-ice performance. This season, the Vegas Golden Knights had to contend with extended absences for three key veterans: Mark Stone, Max Pacioretty and Alec Martinez. While the Knights clearly missed their presence on the ice, I’d be willing to bet that their absence from the dressing room left an even bigger hole. Even after those players returned to the roster, the Golden Knights seemed to be a team in disarray. Their equilibrium had been badly disrupted, and they couldn’t get it back.
Some leaders are rah-rah guys while others represent a calming influence when things get tough. Either way, the prolonged absence of a team leader or significant player can have a ripple effect through a line-up that might never be evident on a scoresheet.
I spoke with Vancouver Canucks center and alternate captain Brandon Sutter about his experience this year. The 13-year veteran was gearing up for his 14th NHL season when he began having difficulty training, and was soon diagnosed with post-acute sequelae of SARS-COV-2, otherwise known as long-haul COVID.
You can point to Sutter’s absence from the Canucks as one of the reasons the team got off to a slow start from which it wasn’t able to recover. His penalty-killing prowess and ability to score timely goals was sorely missed, but what the Canucks could have used most of all as they tried to bring a bunch of new players together in 2021-22 was his veteran presence and leadership. Sutter was continually mentioned in previous season exit interviews with team management as someone teammates looked to for guidance and cohesion.
Sutter said early in the season when he thought his symptoms would be resolved in time to rejoin the team, he tried to be around the guys frequently, talking to them about the penalty kill or what happened in the previous game, but it was never quite the same as being able to have those discussions in the heat of the moment on the players’ bench or in the dressing room between periods.
In Sutter’s estimation, a player’s ability to impact a room depends in large part on the expected length of the absence.
“It’s easy to stay fully engaged and to be at the rink every day and doing your normal routine when you know the timeline of your injury”, Sutter said. “When your return date is far away or unknown, like with a concussion or the situation I am dealing with, the longer it goes, the more difficult it can be to stay involved.”
Sutter says that as it became clear his illness would keep him away for the entire season, his participation diminished. While his bond to teammates remained strong socially and he was always welcomed with open arms, it was harder to contribute and to stay connected from a hockey perspective.
“When I thought I would be returning this year, I was pretty dialled in and I would watch all of our PK and other system play closely because I wanted to stay sharp and be ready to go,” he said, “but as time went by and we knew I wouldn’t be returning, it got harder and harder to think I could make a difference, and it didn’t really make sense for me to be in guys’ ears about their play.”
Sutter was buoyed by the team’s late-season surge and attended as many games as he could, watching from the press box. He found it difficult to watch from there but said it was helpful to see the game from a completely different vantage point.
“Everything looks so easy from up there,” he said. “It seems like there is so much room. You see a winger chip the puck off the wall when there was an obvious seam pass to the D-man available and you wonder how he missed it. Then you realize that at ice-level, you can’t see the same things as you can up top. It does show you that you may have a little more time with the puck than you think when you’re playing. You really get a good feel for the X’s and O’s of the game from that view and you can try to pass those observations on to the guys.”
Passing on observations is one thing, but it’s clear that an injured player’s impact is limited. For Sutter and other players who have been through an extended absence, it’s difficult to lead from the training room. There’s just no substitute for being in the fight with your troops.
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Chris Gear joined Daily Faceoff in January after a 12-year run with the Vancouver Canucks, most recently as the club’s Assistant General Manager and Chief Legal Officer. Before migrating over to the hockey operations department, where his responsibilities included contract negotiations, CBA compliance, assisting with roster and salary cap management and governance for the AHL franchise, Gear was the Canucks’ vice president and general counsel.
Click here to read Gear’s other Daily Faceoff stories.
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