Tom Renney discussing Whitney and the injury (courtesy the article): "There is some trepidation there that it’s still a little tender. He’s got a little bit of pain there. But from what I can gather, and even in talking to Ryan, it’s more of a function of scar tissue breaking down, which is actually healthy, and makes the joint healthier, so that’s the kind of thing you get in July and August when you don’t see the whites of their eyes. You’re not out on the ice with them and can’t put them through their paces and get a feel through talking to them and your trainers in terms of how everything is going.”
Robin Brownlee interviewed Whitney on Nation Radio a little over a week ago:
Whitney: "It's pretty good, it's got a little way to go. I feel really good skating, it's just certain things it can get a little tight. It can get sore after, the one good thing is that I've seen steady improvement."
I think those two quotes added together should leave us generally positive about the situation. One item that does strike me is the length of recovery. Whitney had the surgery in mid-January and it is now 7 months later. He is an outstanding professional athlete and still young. I'm no doctor but doesn't that seem like a terribly long recovery? Or am I wrong and this is a typical recovery time for an ankle?
Either way, overall I'd suggest this is encouraging news about a vital portion of the Oilers season.
I don't see it as encouraging. The talk of soreness, etc. makes me nervous.
ReplyDeleteIf this team has taught us anything the past few years, the target will be for him to start on opening night (soreness be damned) and play through the soreness. That is, until it gets inflamed and too sore to play or it gets re-injured.
Count me as nervous.
ankifoo - the current malady of Whitney.
I'm a little nervous too. However, if the surgery affected the Achilles then it could take a long time to heal. Do I remember the injury correctly in that his tendon dislocated somehow?
ReplyDeleteI am 30 and rehabbing surgery form a fully ruptured Achilles tendon right now. It's been 7 months and I am probably another month form playing soccer again. I'm definitely no pro athlete but I'm in good shape and I have been on top of my rehab with regular physio throughout. It can be slow...
damn no edit button...
ReplyDeleteform = from when I type
With Whitney's injury history, and the number of times he has been seriously injured in the last few years, it may be that his ability to heal quickly that most young people have is not as apparent now. Couple that with that knowledge that different people heal at different rates, and that what takes some people 6 weeks to heal may take another 8-10 weeks and another 3 weeks, and I end up having only one concern with Whitney:
ReplyDeleteDo they rush him back in to start the season, or do they make sure he's fully healed before he plays?
LT: whilst not the same injury as Whitney's, I previously suffered an ankle injury (about 6 years ago now - I'm now 23) which stopped me from playing hockey (field hockey, that is) for about 3 months but felt pain there for the rest of the season. I still get twinges of pain there every so often, but have never injured it again despite playing relatively high level field hockey since. I'm not overly worried (although I am slightly, he is our best D-man) as ankle injuries take a while to fully heal (probably due to being a joint that's constantly in use). I wouldn't expect a quick recovery and everything that's been said about it seems to be par for the course.
ReplyDelete@shau_co
ReplyDeleteYou are correct in identifying that it was a tendon injury but I don't believe it was the Achilles tendon. There are multiple other tendons in the ankle and I believe the problem was a tendon dislocation, as opposed to a tear. It was never specified, as far as I could find, exactly which tendon was dislocated though some on this board (re: Ashley) have suggested the Posterior Tibial. Whitney was quoted as saying it was a rare type of injury (the quote stated that his surgeon figured there was only about 70 cases of it ever).
Based on that, I would suspect there is very little precedence for length of recovery for this particular injury. In general though, ankle operations are a bitch and healing takes time. The fact that Whitney isn't giving the standard "I'm at 100%, feel better than I've ever felt, best shape of my life" answer that all players give in August makes me think there's either cause for concern or Whitney's just a refreshingly honest guy... or both.
One thing to keep in mind: Operations can help fix structural problems, but some people are never 100% after an operation. In theory it would be great to have Whitney wait it out at the start of the season until he's 100%, but there's no promise he gets there. The MOST promising thing is just what Whitney says: "...the good thing is that I see steady improvement."
Cross your fingers folks, the 11/12 Oilers team have a lot riding on this man's ankles.
Someone confirm or refute this: wasn't didn't Whitney have the same surgery to his other foot while in Pittsburgh? Arn't both surgeries related to a congenital growth defect that makes him more susceptible to injury, but with surgery can be 100% normal? If I'm remembering correctly, someone should go back and look at how long it took him to recover the first time.
ReplyDelete@major
ReplyDeleteNo this was different and reported as unrelated. He had surgery on his second foot for the growth defect (2010 off-season?).
However, maybe his two prior foot surgeries did have an effect on this more recent injury. You never know as the body re-aligns everything in very subtle ways and more stress may have been placed on the tendon that dislocated.
Yes, I have read that he had that surgery also. This either means multiple surgeries, or he had them all done at once while they were in there. It is not what caused his season ending ankle injury, but I think it may have been the same foot. He has mutant feet.
ReplyDelete@ major
ReplyDeleteThis surgery was indeed a result of the second operation he had on his foot since, as it was explained, the foot surgery caused the tendon to pop out of the groove it was residing in and needed to be relocated.
I don't recall him having a similar problem with the other ankle so there is likely no precedent for recovery time.
i've broken and sprained both ankles, a couple of times each (yeah!). the last time i broke my right ankle, it took almost a year to feel normal; that said, it's never felt 100% since.
ReplyDeletemost of my recovery times were in the 3-5 month frames
FWIW
from the staples article, i found these comments by renney on the goalies, interestting:
ReplyDelete“I certainly don’t expect Nikolai Khabibulin to play 70 games. I’m not sure he can play 60. I’m not sure he can play 50. That’s the great mystery here.”
As for Devan Dubnyk, Renney said the young goalie needs to get stronger, more explosive, a fair critique. He added that Dubnyk will take over from Khabibulin sooner or later. “I think this is a young fellow who is on the verge of being a National Hockey League starter. There’s no question about that.”
Khabibulin is certainly getting older, Renney said.
“For me, it’s a perfect scenario at some point in time, whether it’s this year or the beginning of next year, sooner rather than later remains to be seen, but there is an opportunity for a changing of the guard. And it should be a healthy situation.”
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI'd also like to see them limit his minutes. If they're playing him 28 minutes a night right off the hop, he'll be out by Christmas whether his foot is healed or not.
ReplyDeleteI speculated the posterior tibial tendon based on media comments, and I think that is the most likely.
ReplyDeleteA couple of notes: This is not an ankle fracture. A fracture heals more or less like new, depending on the associated ligament damage. 100% 3-4 months after an ankle fracture is a reasonable expectation (to use a Lowetidian phrase). A soft tissue injury is always more serious. Tendons and ligaments don't heal 100% and we cannot expect 100% from Whitney ever again. I would argue he hasn't been 100% since his days with PIT though, so I don't think it is unreasonable to hope that he returns to the player he was last year.
Whitney's feet are surgically altered and all of the soft tissues are adjusting to the altered biomechanics. The dislocated post tib was almost certainly related to his pes cavus repair as it likely left the retinaculum in which the tendon resides redundant (or it became redundant over time after the pes cavus repair). These types of repeated tendon issues are likely what Whitney will face for the rest of his playing career much like Forsberg. I think this is why such a high draft pick who demonstrated tremendous early success in the NHL has seen so many teams in his career. Everyone who owns him sees an asset diminishing in value.
As far as timelines, it is not unusual for the pain related to reconstructive foot surgery to take 12 months or longer to become manageable. Morning stiffness is a certainty for the rest of his life. Many never become pain free, but adjust their lifestyles to manage the pain. That may sound depressing, but feet are complex requiring fairly precise function to handle the stresses put on them by even a relative sedentary patient, not to mention a professional athlete and are uncomparable to musculoskeletal injuries in any other part of the body.
We'll have to wait and see what he can do on the ice. More difficult for him may be the psychological component. A professional hockey career takes a tremendous toll on their body. His feet have been bandaided and would probably do well for most of his life if he was Joe citizen, but may not stand up to the rigours of NHL duty. He probably realizes that this is a possibility, and may lack the confidence to be the kind of NHL player he has been in the past knowing he is just one ice rut away from more pain and and more surgery.
At the end of the day, he will have a long life as a retired NHL player, and consideration must be given to his need to ambulate with minimal use of aids before his elderly years. Being an NHL player is probably fun and of primary importance in his life right now, but as hard as it may be to believe, there are some things that are far more important. I hope he and his doctors are taking this very seriously.
As someone who has completely ruptured the MCL in his ankle I can confirm that the rehab is very long and slow with soft tissue injuries of the ankle. The fact that the joint is in use coupled with the fact that it has fairly low blood flow really slow down the recovery time. As someone with a ton of scar tissue in the joint know I can also tell you how painful it is to start breaking it up.
ReplyDeleteHopefully he'll be okay, we really need him on the blue this winter.
hee hee, Ashley said "morning stiffness". :)
ReplyDeleteAll kidding aside, great post Ashley. Thanks for the informational detail.
It seems likely that Ryan Whitney had a dislocation of his posterior tibial tendon. It slipped, when he caught his edge in a rut on the ice, out of the malleolar groove. It fits the known facts and the subsequent surgery and recovery.
ReplyDeleteEssentially what the surgeon did is deepen the groove. What we don't know is the following:
did he tear the tendon itself?
did he turn out to have a lax retinaculum or did he tear it?
Given the pain he is experiencing on recovery he probably suffered some damage to the flexor retinaculum that had to be repaired. That is the ligament, the large fiber, that in simple terms forms the tunnel that helps hold the tendons and some pretty important nerves in place.
Likely time to recover based on the literature is 7-13 months. Full recovery is the expected result. That is based on published results on football players, tri-athletes, water skiers, marathon runners, and downhill skiers many of them elite or professional athletes.
Should he be ready to play in training camp without further risk? Probably. He might well have been able to return sometime ago, albeit in a fair amount of pain. Certainly this injury should have no long term effect on his career.
I also read here quite frequently that Ryan Whitney has a long history of injuries. This isn't currect. His pro career goes like this,
80 games in his first AHL season
77, 81, 76 in his first three NHL seasons, surgery (osteotomy) to his left arch to lower it - he was born with abnormally high arches, 49 games in 4th season, 81 games in fifth season in NHL, another osteotomy to lower the arch in his right foot, 35 games in sixth NHL season - first injury of his career. Surgery to correct a life long anatomical abnormality is in no way the same as an injury.
I agree with vor.
ReplyDeleteYou can return 100% or a little better from some injuries. It's simply not true to say "Tendons and ligaments don't heal 100% and we cannot expect 100% from Whitney ever again."
I have been told with my Achilles tendon rupture that most people achieve 100% or better - it just takes a long time to get there.
You can return 100% or a little better from some injuries. It's simply not true to say "Tendons and ligaments don't heal 100% and we cannot expect 100% from Whitney ever again."
ReplyDeleteI categorically disagree.
Hmmmm, so you are saying I can put a sample from a healed achilles under the microscope and see cellular structure unaltered from a healthy standard reference? WADR, this suggests a misunderstanding of the basic pathophysiology and natural history of MSK soft tissue injuries.
Some compensate well after a tendon or ligament injury and can end up close to symptom free and close to full range of motion, but without question, in the context of feet, this is the exception rather than the rule. The tendon/ligament is structurally altered and inherently weaker for the rest if its natural life.
Perhaps this is what you meant?
Moreau's Attitude
ReplyDeleteI guess poor Ethan doesn't think he's injury prone and that the rest of the NHL teams weren't interested in offering him a contract. See link above.
Wow, a sense of entitlement or what ?
From Tencer on twitter:
ReplyDeletedantencer Dan Tencer
Ryan Whitney says he had a setback with his injury a couple of weeks ago that resulted in some swelling and soreness...
Whitney flew to see his surgeon yesterday and was told that everything is still on track and some aggressive treatment will take care of it.
Whitney is going to take it easy re: skating for about a week and then start to ramp it up about 2 weeks prior to the start of camp.
So, sounds to me like he's not 100% and there is risk he won't be for the season opener. He will need some time.
sorry, the last paragraph was my comments. to be clear.
ReplyDeleteAshley,
ReplyDeleteWith all due respect, our tendons and ligaments change at a cellular level as we age, if we are injured, depending on what sports we play, if we have been pregnant, and in some cases what drugs and diet we have followed.
The question of interest in the Whitney case is can 100% of normal function be recovered?
I have done an extensive search of the research literature on malleous groove deepening. The vast majority of cases return to 100% of pre-operative activity and yes that includes professional athletes. Here is a good summary.
http://www.ispub.com/ostia/index.php?xmlFilePath=journals%2Fijos%2Fvol8n1%2Ftendon.xml
For those of you who might want a crash course in this area here is a link to orthogate
http://www.orthogate.org/patient-education/ankle/peroneal-tendon-subluxation.html
It is worth noting that outcomes continue to improve as new techniques are being deployed.
Checking some of the articles written about this injury right after it happened and after his surgery, the talk was that Whitney hoped to get back for a couple of games, and then the WC's.
ReplyDeleteThe kind of injury he suffered was described as "freaky", not one that you can't recover from. It's also an injury more common among football players than hockey.
He got back on the ice right before the end of the season, but it was obvious then it was going to be a longer recovery-not shorter. Ashley's comments - that injuries associated w/ligament damage take longer to heal are bang on.
I think we'd all like to see him be able to play come the start of the season but it might take longer as that's only the 9.5 month mark.
What needs healing is that gd'd ice at Rexall, no? Still rated #1 by players apparently (poll last season I believe), but didn't Vandemeer hit a rut at Rexall or was that on the road? Posters here and at ON who go to the games comment rather frequently on the poor ice there.
ReplyDelete@Jake70: The Vandermeer injury was also at Rexall. In his case he took a hit, popped in the air and and landed in a rut, you could see clearly on the video where the injury occurred and it was definitely due to the ice. Whitney simply skated into a rut, one moment he was skating with the puck and doing what he does and the next his season was fucking over.
ReplyDeleteSeveral other ankle and groin injuries were incurred on home ice, including Khabibulin, Hemsky, Eberle and Hall (not that these are key players or anything). There were extenuating circumstances in some of them (e.g. a bad hit on Eberle, a takedown in a fight for Hall) so who knows if the ice was a factor in each case, but overall the Oilers suffered a significant home ice disadvantage on the injury front, with at least two injuries specifically blamed on ruts.
I remember seeing an article or interview (sorry, can't remember which) where they talked to a Northlands rep who said they were in charge of the ice quality (and not the Oilers). He said they had issues at the start of the season and that they worked through these issues with the Oilers and they were confident they were resolved and the ice was as good as it could be.
ReplyDeleteHe went on to say that for all those people who remember the ice from back in the 80's one of the differences now is that the building is busier than back then and thus it causes more challenges to having good ice.
Sorry, can't source the article except from memory.
OT...
ReplyDeleteI see TSN seems to be re-framing Hall's rookie season as a disappointment:
In his injury-shortened rookie season, Hall scored only 22 goals including a goal-less seven-game stretch to start the season
I just hate it when 18/19 yo rookies score only 22 goals in 65 games.
As for Whitney, time will tell.
Vor
ReplyDeleteI certainly hope Whitney is NOT pregnant or we have far bigger problems on his recovery than just the ankle problems.
Seriously Vor/Ashley thank you for the analysis
Not quite sure Hemsky's shoulder is related to Northlands ice but in am sure you can make that connection. Ditto Hall getting twisted to the ground by Dorsey.
2nd shooter on the grassy knoll anyone
Bad Ice Oilers Injuries
ReplyDeleteCouldn't find a link about the Northlands guy, but a Sun article questioning the ice causing injuries.
City Report
Looks like a plant replacement was done in 2008 as per City Report link above.
Okay cut with the guff, Lowetide. What am I supposed to think?
ReplyDeletePersonally, I'm far past the point where anything that happens to this team injury wise means anything.
Who comes back first, Whitney or his former teammate Crosby?
ReplyDeleteWhitney. The Oilers are a stupider organization.
ReplyDeleteRegwald, thanks for the links on the ice, interesting. When I said my piece above, I was wondering (too lazy to look) if any players are saying anything. A guy like Horcoff adds weight to the "complaints" as he has been playing on that surface the longest.
ReplyDeleteSpoiler, wonder how they would frame it if he played on the Leafs?
ReplyDeleteWhitney. The Oilers are a stupider organization.
ReplyDeleteYea. I liked the Renney parts where he says there is some trepidation and then follows it up with him expecting Whitney to be in camp at 100%. Sounds sourayly familiar.
I'm a bit flummoxed that the Oilers didn't do more to bolster the blue line knowing that Whitney's injury needed a long-term recovery and how much the team's success depends on him.
ReplyDeleteUnless the "brain trust" is planning on getting that #1 pick next year...
vor,
ReplyDeleteI think I see where we got our wires crossed.
I agree that functional recovery is what we should be discussing. In my experience (not extensive as this is a rare injury), malleolar groove deepening does indeed work just fine. However, Whitney's issues are much broader. His dislocated post tib was without question secondary to altered biomechanics from his pes cavus repairs. It is this problem and the unusual stresses it puts on his ligaments and tendons that will likely plague his feet for the rest of his career.
I just hate it when 18/19 yo rookies score only 22 goals in 65 games.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that too a few days ago.
Whenever TSN.ca has an article, and the author reads ''TSN.CA STAFF" - they clearly have a bias against Edmonton.
Here's another example of exaggeration:
OILERS LOSE FORWARD REDDOX TO SWEDISH ELITE LEAGUE
http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=366747
TSN - what losers.
Oh no, say it ain't so Joe ... No more Reddox ? The Chicago Wolves truly missed out. MacT will be disappointed.
ReplyDeleteWay to go TSN ... a little late to the game on that one.
lowedepo ... the magical stories of Lowetide.
I don't think anyone can seriously believe there's anything to be optimistic about regarding 6's healthy until he plays in 35 of the first 40 games.
ReplyDeleteIt's a day-to-day thing with him and to be he's like a pitcher with a history of arm trouble and you're just waiting to see him first grimace and leave the game.
I always liked Whitney's passes.
ReplyDeleteFor accuracy:
ReplyDeleteI didn't have a chance to check vor's links provided in his/her last post until now. He has referenced an article detailing peroneal tendon operations, an entirely different kettle of fish when compared to posterior tibial tendon reduction and retinaculum repair. A patient with post tib problems could only wish that it was their peroneals rather than the post tib. Peroneal tendon subluxuation/dislocation are a dime a dozen on a relative basis. Here is a case series on post tib dislocation I referenced on this site on Feb 11:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1888604/
You'll note full function after post tib dislocation is certainly a reasonable expectation, but as I indicated above, this is not the crux of the problem with Ryan's feet.