Carolina Hurricanes defenseman Joni Pitkanen's broken left heal that was sustained on April 2 last season has carried over into the 2013-14 campaign and will sideline the blue liner for the entire year.
Pitkanen broke his left heel when he raced down the ice to beat out Washington's Troy Brouwer on an icing play and ran into the boards while trying to touch the puck to draw the whistle. Pitkanen was stetchered off the ice, in a play that has furthered a lot of arguments for the NHL to adopt a hybrid icing rule that would mean the play would be blown dead automatically on an icing rather than players having to race down to touch it, much like is used in college hockey and in other places including the AHL.
The Carolina Hurricanes announced Wednesday that the injury has progressed worse than the team has thought and will force the defenseman to forfeit the season due to him not being healthy enough to play.
"It's unfortunate," Hurricanes general manager Jim Rutherford told the Raleigh News and Observer. "Joni is a good player who was able to play a lot of minutes for us and he will be missed. We'll now have to deal with it and move forward. We'll explore all options and decide on how we'll proceed."
Pitkanen underwent surgery following the injury and was told that it would require 10-12 weeks of a recovery process. NHL.com reports that Pitkanen told the team that he had a set-back in his rehabilitation and he wasn't healthy despite a CT scan showing the surgery as being successful.
"We were taken a little by surprise, three weeks before training camp, to learn that it was not progressing better than it was," Rutherford said per NHL.com. "I suspect Joni was hoping it would get better and that he could begin putting more weight on it. But the stability was not there."
Pitkanen, 29 and a native of Oulu, Finland, was set to play in his tenth NHL season but will now have to watch from afar as the Carolina Hurricanes look to improve on a season that saw the team finish third in the Southeast division and 13th overall with a 19-25-4 record and 42 points last year. Carolina, which won the Stanley Cup back in 2006, hasn't reached the playoffs since the 2008-09 season.
Pitkanen won't be on the blue line when the puck drops on Carolina's season Oct. 4 at home against the Detroit Red Wings.
Pitkanen has played in 535 games split between Carolina, the Philadelphia Flyers and the Edmonton Oilers, and has averaged 23:08 of ice time throughout his career while putting up 57 goals and 225 assists for 282 points.
Last season, Pitkanen played in 22 games during the 48-game lockout-shortened NHL season, and was second on the team with an average of 22:49 of ice time per game while putting up nine points.
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