It's not every day an NHL player requires surgery after injuring themselves at a team dinner. But from eating pancakes to fixing bagpipes, Jack Hughes' freak incident doesn't stand alone.
The New Jersey Devils were hit with brutal news Saturday after star center Jack Hughes suffered a hand injury at a team dinner in Chicago.
The good news is the team announced Hughes underwent a successful procedure on his finger in New York. The bad news is he’ll be out for roughly eight weeks. He’ll be re-evaluated in six weeks, but the timeline pushes his return into January.
Losing Hughes to injury is a significant setback. To lose him because of a fluke incident where he reportedly cut his hand on glass, according to The Hockey News’ Kristy Flannery, feels much more unlucky.
That said, Hughes is not the only NHL player to miss time because of an unusual off-ice accident.
Some Big-Name Players Missed Time From Uncommon Injuries
Joe Sakic injured his hand trying to fix a snowblower. In 2008, Sakic had surgery to repair three broken fingers and tendon damage. He played in 15 games that season and never again after 2009. He was dealing with several injuries and ultimately was forced into retirement.
That same season, St. Louis Blues defenseman Erik Johnson – the first overall pick in the 2006 NHL draft – tore two ligaments in his right knee during a golf outing. He reportedly attempted to stop his golf cart and step out when he jammed his right foot between the accelerator and brake. What Johnson referred to as a freak incident ended up causing him to miss all of the 2008-09 season.
There have been food-related accidents, too.
Brent Sopel once threw out his back bending over to pick up a cracker. Luke Fox of Sportsnet recalled in 2012 that the defenseman missed playoff action with the Vancouver Canucks in 2007 as a result.
“He was trying to pick up a cracker and anybody who has had back problems knows that can happen,” then-Canucks coach Alain Vigneault explained at the time.
Dustin Penner went viral after suffering back spasms during a pancake breakfast. The “injured eating pancakes” reference will live forever on hockey Twitter.
“Apparently, it's one of those mysterious things, where you can throw it out (from) sneezing,” Penner told Rich Hammond with L.A. Kings Insider. “I just leaned over to dip into some delicious pancakes that my wife made."
Penner made the most of the punchlines and partnered with mayorsmanor.com to sponsor a “Pancakes with Penner” breakfast, which sold raffle tickets that raised money for charity.
Perhaps the strangest reported injury was when Glenn Healy needed stitches after cutting himself… trying to fix a set of bagpipes from the First World War before training camp.
“What I didn’t realize was they had not only tied the bags on, but glued the bag on,” Healy told the National Post in 2014. “I started with a knife, and I was trying to get the bag off, and it wouldn’t come off. And the knife slipped, and it went in my hand. I looked at my hand and went, ‘Oh, better not do that again.’ So I got scissors… and they slipped again, and I ended up looking down at my hand, and you could see bone.”
Hughes’ injury may be one of the more unusual ones in recent memory, but it certainly isn’t the strangest injury on record.
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