The Tampa Bay Lightning announced Sunday evening that forward Ryan Callahan, who has been out of the lineup for the past three games, will be missing four weeks due to a lower-body injury. Callahan last played on January 7th, against the Philadelphia Flyers. Before that he played just three games dating back to January 3rd where he previously missed 15 consecutive contests due to this ailing injury. However, Sunday, the team confirmed that the injury was significant and that he would be sidelined for a month, no more jumping in and out of the lineup.
#TBLightning forward Ryan Callahan will be out approximately four weeks with a lower-body injury.
— Tampa Bay Lightning (@TBLightning) January 16, 2017
Ryan Callahan’s “Nagging” Injury
“There’s lots of concern,” head coach Jon Cooper said in an interview with NHL.com. ” … Let’s move our team aside. It’s Callahan. Everybody knows who follows our team what a gamer he is, his passion to play and to help our team, especially when things haven’t gone as well as we’d have hoped. For him to get in for (three) games and have to be out with some lingering effects with some past issues he’s had, it’s killing the kid. So, you feel for him. We’re missing an emotional leader. It’s tough all the way around.”
The injury, which has been concluded as a hip injury, originally occurred last season, was operated on and surgically repaired this summer. However, since the beginning of the 2016-17 National Hockey League season, his hip has been acting up and has been labeled as “nagging” by Callahan himself.
“It’s been extremely frustrating,” Callahan told the Tampa Bay Times. “I mean, four months recovery in the summer, then come back play 15 games, and out again for a month and a half or so. There have been a lot of ups and downs through the last month and a half. You want to be out there with the guys and playing.”
Last season, Callahan, who has been a solid bottom six forward for the club, tallied 28 points in 73 games played. This season, he has two goals and two assists in a mere 18 games played. The hip injury has been tough on Callahan, limiting him to little time out there on the ice. He missed all of December due to it and now will miss an additional four weeks, putting him at a return date of around late February.
In his NHL career, Callahan has skated in a total of 638 games, scoring 174 goals and earning 351 points. During the 2013-14 season, he arrived in Tampa Bay after being traded by the New York Rangers (where he spent his previous eight seasons) in a captain-for-captain deal involving former Bolts forward Martin St. Louis.
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