Paul Kariya under the Knife

As it turns out forward Paul Kariya will not be coming off the injury reserve list for quite some time.

 On Saturday night, a day after an MRI showed quite a bit of damage in Kariya’s hip, the team decided that this veteran who has 15 points in 11 games this season should in fact go under the knife and repair it once and for all.

What makes this so hard for Kariya to take is that the 34 year old was set to make a return in the very near future after rehabbing and believing to be close to playing after initially hurting the hip back on November 5 in Anaheim.

The MRI was taken after Kariya suffered a major setback on Friday when he left the ice only ten minutes into his workout.

“He knows the sooner he gets it done, the sooner he’s going to be able to play,” said St. Louis president John Davidson who signed the scoring forward a year ago to a three year contract worth 18 million.

“Whether that’s six weeks from now or toward the end of the season or toward the fall, it doesn’t matter.”

Kariya who was trying to bounce back from a sub- par campaign that saw him score only 65 points with the Blues was initially diagnosed with torn muscle fibers near the top of his thigh.

Even though the Blues are in the mist of a terrible slump that has seen them drop seven of their last eight games and are last in the Western Conference with a 13-18-3 record, Davidson does not want to panic by rushing Kariya back into action.

“Doing it right, rehabbing it properly and getting the right person to do it, that’s more important than saying, ‘Come on, let’s get back in a month,” said Davidson.

Even though Kariya isn’t exactly a young man anymore, Davidson insists that the forward who builds his game on speed will come back as good as new and as a result play his best hockey.

“He’ll be better, better than what he’s been,” Davidson said. “Everybody feels if he gets it repaired and does his rehab properly, he’ll be 110 per cent ready to go.”

Meanwhile Davidson knows that with all the injuries, there is nothing that his team can do but play hard and hope for the best until the troops come back.

“We deal with what we have to deal with,” said Davidson. “We have to play with purpose and intelligence, and we’ll compete, that’s what the mandate is.”

 

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