Hip, knee surgery will keep Jets’ Myers off ice until late summer

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This article was published 24/03/2016 (3482 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Tyler Myers will spend more time under the knife than he could spend on the ice over the next while and, as a result, the Winnipeg Jets have shut their mammoth defenceman down for the rest of the season.

Jets coach Paul Maurice revealed after Thursday’s game-day skate that Myers, in fact, needs two surgeries: a procedure on his knee was done this morning and that will be followed by hip surgery once the regular season is completed and his knee has stabilized.

The hip surgery is significant — needing 16-20 weeks of recovery — and the club hopes the 26-year-old defenceman can be back on the ice as part of his rehab by mid-August/September.

“But he also now needs a knee surgery, which has complicated the timing of this because he can’t have the knee surgery after the hip surgery,” Maurice explained. “He needs his knee to rehab the hip. If we had waited to the end of the season and did the knee, it would have pushed the hip closer to May, which now gets closer to October (for a return) and closer to the regular season before he’s back on the ice playing.”

Maurice said the procedure done on Myers’ knee was not “significant” or needing a long-term rehab. Myers has been dealing with a hip issue for a while, but the team’s medical staff didn’t think he needed surgery until recently.

Losing Myers is significant because he has averaged 22 minutes and 37 seconds of ice time, second only to Dustin Byfuglien (24:57). His 27 points (nine goals and 18 assists) were also second-highest among Jets defencemen, after Byfuglien, and eighth on the team overall.

There is also good news on the injury front for the Jets: both Nikolaj Ehlers and Joel Armia are expected to be back up front for the club tonight against the Los Angeles Kings, while Mark Stuart will take Myers’ spot on the blueline.

Ehlers, who missed 10 games after suffering an eye injury when a shot cracked his visor, was back on the left side of the top line with Mark Scheifele and Blake Wheeler wearing a full face shield.

“It’s been a long three weeks and I want to be out there again,” said Ehlers. “It’s nice to be out there again with the guys and be able to play.”

Asked about the face shield and the adjustment to it, Ehlers added: “Short shifts. It’s pretty hard to breathe in there. It’s just going to be about a week (with the shield). It’s not too bad. It’s going to be weird to play with that, but exciting (to be back on the ice) as well.”

Armia, out for eight games with a lower-body injury, was on the second trio with Alex Burmistrov and Drew Stafford.

“It’s really nice to be back,” said Armia. “The injury was a little bit longer than I first thought, but I’m really happy to be back right now.”

Stuart, meanwhile, broke his hand blocking a shot against Edmonton on Feb. 13 and has missed the last 18 games. He has been skating for about 10 days or so and back on the ice for the last three or four practices.

“We just wanted to make sure it had healed,” said Stuart. “It was a pretty clean break so it was able to heal pretty well. It’s never easy to be hurt, but there were a few other guys in the same boat as me so we were able to skate together and work out together and keep each other motivated.”

ed.tait@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPEdTait