RALEIGH, NC. - The injury bug has hit the Carolina Hurricanes hard to start the 2023-24 regular season.
Andrei Svechnikov (knee) wasn't ready to return for Opening Night after an ACL injury in March, Vasily Ponomarev (knee) and Ryan Suzuki (shoulder) were both hurt during training camp, and on the team's recent swing out west, Sebastian Aho (upper-body injury), Frederik Andersen (upper-body injury), and Brett Pesce (lower-body injury) all went down.
Painful on a variety of levels, the injuries have not only caused a dent of over $24M of absences from the Canes lineup but it's obviously played an impact in the team's 3-3 start to the season.
"Everything's kind of worked against us here lately," Rod Brind'Amour said following Monday's practice at Invisalign Arena. "There's a lot of things going on that add to [our play] not looking right. I don't want to get looking at this group and thinking that there are a bunch of things going wrong until we have the group. We've got to really get a good assessment of where we're at once everyone is back."
The good news is that it may not be much longer until they have everyone healthy.
Svechnikov, who had been in a yellow no-contact jersey since the first day of training camp, finally operated in a standard practice sweater Monday. Although he won't be ready for Tuesday's contest in Tampa, he's only a few practices away from his season debut.
"Over the last three weeks, I've been doing testing on my knees and we kind of changed the program a bit. We've started doing more running and jumping and I think it's helped me a lot," the 2023 All-Star said of the final stretch of his recovery. "Two or three weeks ago I had a 20% difference in [the capability] of my knees. Now we're closer to both being 100%. I just have to be able to practice with the team and be comfortable."
Although we won't know exactly where Svechnikov will slot in when he returns to the lineup, at Monday's effort he was slotted to the left of Aho and Brendan Lemieux.
