{"id":8452,"date":"2017-04-05T13:32:22","date_gmt":"2017-04-05T17:32:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonhockey.com\/?p=8452"},"modified":"2017-04-05T13:37:15","modified_gmt":"2017-04-05T17:37:15","slug":"letang-will-undergo-neck-surgery-4-6-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2017\/04\/05\/letang-will-undergo-neck-surgery-4-6-months\/","title":{"rendered":"Kris Letang will Undergo Neck Surgery, Out 4-6 Months"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Pittsburgh Penguins will be without defenceman\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/l\/letankr01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kris Letang<\/a><\/strong> for the 2017 Stanley Cup\u00a0Playoffs. The defensemen is set to undergo surgery for a herniated disk in his neck, and is expected to miss four-to-six months.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Kris Letang will undergo surgery for a herniated disc in his neck. The recovery period is expected to be 4-6 months. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Q3Fjb0wSkp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/t.co\/Q3Fjb0wSkp<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/sSSezzNNIf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/sSSezzNNIf<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/penguins\/status\/849657303309701120?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">April 5, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Kris Letang will Undergo Neck Surgery, Out 4-6 Months<\/h2>\n<p>For this reason, Letang&#8217;s season has been a downhill spiral. He has missed the past 20 games for the Penguins, dating back to February 21st. While only participating in a mere 41 games, he has recorded a respectable 34 points.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately,\u00a0\u201cKris had been making progress and was hopeful of returning for the playoffs until about a week ago, when the progress plateaued&#8221;, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.post-gazette.com\/sports\/penguins\/2017\/04\/05\/kris-letang-injury-update-herniated-disc-penguins-stanley-cup-playoffs\/stories\/201704050159?pgpageversion=pgevoke\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">according to Penguins general manager<\/a> <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/r\/rutheji01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jim Rutherford<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>All things considered, Letang has continued to be a driving force on Pittsburgh&#8217;s blue line for 11 seasons. With 386 points over 603 career games, his consistency is a valuable part of his game.<\/p>\n<p>Letang is best known for the average amount of ice time that he records each season. This year alone, he has averaged an astounding 25:31, leading the Penguins in average time on ice (ATOI). <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/letang-done-for-season-over-with-herniated-disc-1.715987\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">On February 21, in his final game this season, Letang saw 28:49 of ice time.<\/a><\/p>\n<h1>A Series of Unfortunate Events<\/h1>\n<p>Head coach <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/s\/sullimi01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mike Sullivan<\/a><\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/letang-done-for-season-over-with-herniated-disc-1.715987\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">made it clear to reporters<\/a> that Letang&#8217;s surgery is &#8220;an accumulation of events over time&#8230;It wasn&#8217;t any one incident.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, the recent news is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/letang-done-for-season-over-with-herniated-disc-1.715987\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">&#8220;hard to swallow&#8230;It was not expected&#8221; for the Pittsburgh veteran.<\/a>\u00a0This won&#8217;t be the first time Letang has been sidelined under such unfortunate circumstances. In 2014, he suffered a stroke and missed two and a half months. Letang made his eventual return within the same year. He has also fallen\u00a0victim to three concussions since 2011.<\/p>\n<p>From here on, the reigning Stanley Cup Champions will be forced to compete without their star defensemen. In retrospect, Kris Letang&#8217;s success as a core part of the Penguins organization gives hope for a healthy recovery. He is expected to make a successful return in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Pittsburgh Penguins will be without defenceman\u00a0Kris Letang for the 2017 Stanley Cup\u00a0Playoffs. The defensemen is set to undergo surgery for a herniated disk in his neck, and is expected to miss four-to-six months. Kris Letang will undergo surgery for a herniated disc in his neck. The recovery period is expected to be 4-6 months. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":4260,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"300","footnotes":""},"categories":[34,12],"tags":[1509,259,1020,38,955,44],"class_list":["post-8452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-penguins","tag-jim-rutherford","tag-kris-letang","tag-mike-sullivan","tag-nhl","tag-nhl-news","tag-pittsburgh-penguins"],"modified_by":"Ben Kerr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}