Center has been dealing with right leg injury for some time, returned to the ice with some hopes still of returning Thursday against Seattle
MARYLAND HEIGHTS, Mo. -- As it turns out, Robert Thomas has been dealing with an injury that dates back to last season.
Presumably early last season.
That’s what the St. Louis Blues center said, or at least indicated that his right leg injury that he had a procedure on as announced by the team on Jan. 31 that was something that had been bothering him for quite some time.
The injury believed to be the one that’s affected Thomas was the right ankle fracture after blocking a shot Oct. 22, 2024 on a shot by Winnipeg Jets forward Neal Pionk.
Thomas only missed 12 games following that injury and played through the rest of the season and finished among one of the top point producers following the 4 Nations Face-Off.
He was on the ice on Friday for practice at Centene Community Ice Center for the first time with teammates and a target for a return could be as early as the first game back from the break, next Thursday against the Seattle Kraken.
“I’m feeling better,” said Thomas, who has been skating on his own for four days. “Every day making some good progress. It’s nice to get a skate in with the guys. It sucks skating alone. Nice to be back with the group.
“… Making good progress every day, being able to do more and more. Pretty happy with how it’s going to far.
Thomas re-injured himself Dec. 31 against the Colorado Avalanche and there was some belief that it was that injury that has affected his play since, but that injury only likely aggravated what has been going on for some time.
“It’s something that’s been bothering me for a long time,” he said. “We’ve known about it for a while. Every since kind of towards the end of last year, it started to get bad. We thought we could just manage it this year and it just continually got worse and worse until a point where we kind of had to get it done. We were hoping to make it to the end of the year, tried to rest it for a couple weeks, but at the end of the day, just had to get it done. It’s best for the end of the season and long term. That’s kind of the process.
“I’ve had it for a long time. It hasn’t been something new. We’ve been able to manage it for a long time and it hasn’t affected me too bad. Just since then, the way it (felt), it just kind of made it worse.”
Managing it and finally coming to terms that it was time to do something about it finally came to fruition.
“Kind of that last trip that I was playing on,” Thomas said of a road trip Jan. 7-10. “We had talked about resting it for a little bit and then trying and seeing how that went, and that’s what we did, and it just didn’t go great. That’s when we kind of led ourselves to that decision.”
Thomas has 33 points (11 goals, 22 assists) in 42 games this season, just wants to be healthy and didn’t want to make excuses as to what parts of his game this injury has affected.
“I don’t want to get too much into that. It’ll be nice to get healthy,” he said. “Having almost three weeks, that was pretty much the recovery time. Having that break definitely towards getting it done for sure.”
As for his return, he left the Kraken game as an option.
“It’s always up as a possibility. I can’t guarantee it,” Thomas said. “Like you said, day by day. Every day I’ve been making good progress. That’s the main thing. There’s been no setbacks. I’ve made some good strides the last couple days. We’ve got under just a week to then, so hopefully keep making good strides and try to get in there.”
Blues coach Jim Montgomery echoed those thoughts.
“Real good first step,” Montgomery said. “There’s still many steps to go, but it was good to see him out there. We’re going to see how he feels after skating for 40 minutes today.
“I think it’s too early to tell right now (regarding Thursday). It would be nice. I think he wants to. I know he wants to, but we’ll have to see how it plays out.”
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