The Bruins have to announce an official update on the status of Zdeno Chara after suffering an apparent knee injury during Wednesday’s game against the Avalanche.
But whatever it is, it certainly doesn’t look good for the 41-year-old blue liner.
Might be the play where Chara went down with an injury. Not a good look on that knee. pic.twitter.com/EuYblCreVX
— Conor Ryan (@ConorRyan_93) November 15, 2018
With Boston’s D corps already in rough shape, the last thing the Black and Gold need is for their captain and top minutes eater to be sidelined for an extended stretch.
So what kind of injury could Chara be facing? T
o search for some answers, I caught up with BostonSportsJournal.com’s medical expert
Dr. Jessica Flynn
for her insight on the situation.
Q: Looking at the video, what do suspect Chara’s injury to be?
It looked like Chara got hit in the outside part of the knee, so we call that a valgus injury to the knee. So that type of an injury — the first thing we worry about is the medial collateral ligament, the MCL. That gets stretched and if there’s enough force to stretch that to the point that it tears, sometimes the ACL is also at risk. So when I saw the video, I thought that this definitely looks like an MCL injury and there is a chance of an ACL injury.
The only reason that I’m feeling a little bit optimistic with this injury is that he had the benefit of being on skates and on the ice. And you can see that his foot moves as he’s getting hit and that absorbs some of the force. If he had his foot planted on the football field, you would have had a little bit of a higher risk of getting an ACL injury than on ice. So while I think the ACL injury is a possibility, I think it’s a little less likely.
Q: In terms of MCL injuries, how much can they vary in terms of severity and a recovery timetable?
A mild injury could be a week. I don’t think, unfortunately, that this looked like a mild injury. A Grade 2 or a moderate injury could be anywhere for 4-6 weeks off the ice. (Charlie) McAvoy had the same injury — he had an MCL injury last year. I believe he came back right around five weeks. I would just point to McAvoy with his MCL injury and he was off the ice for at least a month. So that just gives you a bit of a ballpark.
If this was simply an MCL injury, surgery is not required to treat that. That’s the best case. Worst case would be an MCL and an ACL injury, which would require surgical reconstruction and he’d be out for the season.
Q: He’s still an effective defenseman at 41 years old, but age has to factor into Chara’s recovery timetable, right?
Certainly, age and mileage on the joint can affect the outcome. I’d be surprised if he made it through the league this long without an MCL injury, but if there’s any kind of degenerative change in the knee, that can delay a return to play. It’s just harder to get your body back in playing condition if you’re recovering from a bigger injury.
So if this an ACL injury, you can expect that that’s going to be a little bit longer for him.”
Q: Chara suffered a PCL injury in that same knee in 2014 and noted at the end of that season that the ligament is permanently torn. Could that PCL injury complicate an already tough situation with Chara’s knee?
In a PCL deficient knee, so if his knee does not have a functioning posterior cruciate ligament, then yes. Adding an injury to the MCL can be complicated because that’s two out of the four ligaments that are not structurally stable. I think having a history of a PCL injury does complicate his recovery and it may affect his treatment.
Injury to the MCL in an athlete with a pre-existing PCL tear can lead to significant instability of the knee. It really depends on how significant the previous PCL tear was and whether or not there is instability as a result. An injury to the MCL in a PCL deficient knee can lead to more instability and may warrant more aggressive, sometimes surgical, management.