Chris Pronger Missing Rest of Regular Season & Playoffs
According to CSN Philly’s Tim Panaccio and numerous other sources, Chris Pronger will not play for the remainder of the regular season and the playoffs. The Flyers’ captain hopes that sitting out for the upcoming months may help his post-concussion symptoms and allow him to play again in his career. Safe to drop in any single-season fantasy hockey league.
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UPDATE 12/9/11: The previous update broke down the series of events which went from a virus to knee surgery. Well, apparently that virus was actually a concussion which will keep the team’s captain out indefinitely. From PhiladelphiaFlyers.com:
Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren made a statement concerning the injury status of defenseman Chris Pronger:
While Chris’ knee is improving, he has struggled with other issues that are concussion-like symptoms. Chris will see Dr. Joe Maroon and Dr. Mickey Collins on Wednesday, December 14th in Pittsburgh for further evaluation. Chris will be out indefinetly.
So Pronger won’t even meet with doctors for another five days and has no timetable for return. At this point, you certainly should be looking for a long-term replacement.
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In a surprise turn of events, Philadelphia Flyers GM Paul Holmgren announced that captain and veteran leader Chris Pronger will miss roughly four weeks due to a knee injury. With all the other news that broke this morning, he was likely hoping he could sweep this news under the carpet.
If you recall, Pronger was a surprise scratch due to virus. He would then miss the next four games due to this ailment; not traveling with the team in order to keep them from “infection”.
Unfortunately, the virus spread to his knee, making the 17-year veteran a question mark for this year’s Winter Classic. All kidding aside, let’s take a look at the exact status on #20. From PhiladelphiaFlyers.com:
“Chris will have surgery on his left knee tomorrow afternoon. The surgery will be performed by Dr. Peter DeLuca. The procedure will clean out some loose particles that have given Chris some problems over the last month or so.
“We were hopeful that the time missed with a virus that Chris has been fighting would settle things down in his knee but after an examination yesterday, it was decided that the surgery is the way to go at this time. We expect Chris will be back playing in 4 weeks.”
The team went 2-2-0 without Pronger in the lineup last week. They went 3-2-1 in their first six games without him totaling a 5-4-1 overall record. In short, without the captain, they are a shell of themselves with a very depleted blue line. Times will be tough in Philadelphia over the next couple of weeks. All we can do as fantasy hockey owners is pray for a speedy recovery and that Yahoo! puts him on IR.