After surviving a stretcher scare, spinal trauma, and core surgery, Chris Tanev opens up about the loneliness of a lost year and his return to the Maple Leafs’ blue line with zero hesitation about taking a hit.
Chris Tanev has not played an NHL game since Dec. 28. Tonight, he is in the Maple Leafs’ preseason lineup at Scotiabank Arena when the club hosts the Montreal Canadiens in one of two split-squad games,.
That stretch, concussion, a spinal scare that put him on a stretcher, then a core-muscle tear that ended his season, is the backdrop for a 36-year-old shutdown defenceman who talked g about excitement more than nerves, and about finally being back on the same schedule as everyone else.
He is slated to pair with Jake McCabe, the partner he has leaned on since he arrived in 2024. The last time he took a regular-season shift was in Detroit. On the last shift of that game, he took a step and felt a pop.
“Once you got the MRI and seeing the doctor, it was like you’re having surgery, whether you have it now or after the season or after a playoff run or whenever it happens,” Tanev said Friday. “You’re going to have to have it.”
He described the tear as a Grade 3 rectus abdominis. Every doctor he saw said the same thing. He still waited. The Leafs were trying to stay in the playoff picture after the Olympic break, and Tanev wanted to be available if they got there. When that push flattened out, he had the operation in New York on March 4. The club said it was successful. The expectation then was that he would be ready for camp.
That core procedure was only the last chapter of a 11-game season.
The first blow came Oct. 21 in New Jersey. Tanev left after a collision with Dawson Mercer and was later placed on injured reserve with what the team called an upper-body injury. It was a concussion. He missed four games, then returned Nov. 1 in Philadelphia. In that first game back, an awkward collision with Matvei Michkov put him on a stretcher. The diagnosis that followed included a spinal injury. He missed the rest of November and most of December.
“I’m in a good place now,” Tanev said Friday of the spine. “It’s just something that has to be monitored. Doctors are happy where it’s at.” Asked if he has any apprehension about taking or receiving hits, he did not hesitate. “No.”
He has spent a career getting touched. McCabe made the point this week that one of Tanev’s attributes is that extra split-second: he will still make the play even when he knows he is about to get hit. Tanev framed it the same way. If you are going into games thinking you cannot get touched, he said, “probably not a good place for you to be.”
The loneliness of the year that followed was harder to manage than the hits.
“You feel like you’re alone a lot when you’re hurt,” he said. “You’re not on the team schedule. You’re not traveling with the team. You’re there sort of maybe before they get there. You really don’t feel like you’re part of the team when you’re injured for a long period of time.”
Watching was worse than playing. He sat at home for road games. When the Leafs had a run going into the break and then came out of it flat, the competitive edge in the room, coaches, players, management, ownership. made the television even harder to sit through.
“Watching is more nerve-wracking for a player than playing,” he said.
Auston Matthews had surgery about six weeks after Tanev and was on a different rehab timeline. Dakota Joshua was with him a lot in the summer. The work was slow on purpose. Tanev said the hard part of a core injury is that you only have so much to push off, and the temptation, as a competitive athlete, is to do too much the moment it starts to feel good.
“You don’t want to have setbacks along the way,” he said. “You’ve got to try to, as best as you can, go by feel a bit, but follow the protocols. It can get frustrating.”
Asked whether the layoff was a blessing because it gave his spine more rest, he would not dress it up.
“It is what it is. It happened. Maybe it gave my spine a little more time to rest. It’s sort of a bit of adversity, and sometimes that’s good.”
Saturday morning, after two days of camp and with a game hours away, the tone was lighter. He was more excited than nervous. He had been skating with the group for a few weeks and had the green light for scrimmages and contact. The remaining rust, he said, is not fitness. It is the little stuff.
“I’ve done a ton of skating, so it’s going to be a lot of the quick plays and then little plays under pressure that I haven’t experienced in quite some time,” he said. “The puck gets squirted to the corner. You have someone chasing you. You’ve got to maybe beat him, make a pass. It’s the muscle memory, the reaction time that you’re working on.”
The plan is to feel the game out early and be the same player he has always been: move pucks, get up ice, stay smart.
He is doing that in a different Leafs camp than the one he left. Jim Hiller is behind the bench. The systems are new. The roster is loaded with new faces , Sergei Bobrovsky, Darren Raddysh, Gavin McKenna among them, and the calendar is compressed. The NHL’s shorter camp leaves less runway after a six-month rehab.
“Probably for me, coming off an injury, I wouldn’t have minded a few more days before we played,” Tanev said. “But it is what it is, and it’s a new NHL. Super excited just to get out there and be out there with the guys.”
Tanev’s thoughts on Hiller?
“Very direct, very positive, not a ton of yelling or screaming. But tells us what he wants us to do and how he wants us to execute things. There’s going to be a lot of change from how we played last year. So sort of work through it tonight and then see what we need to improve on going forward. I’m sure there will be a lot.”
Hiller was asked about how Tanev has looked on the ice.
“That first practice was a pretty tough practice. A lot of skating, twisting and turning, contact. And so he and I talked after that. He said he felt great in the practice,” Hiller said. ‘The thing that's impressed me well and what a great defensive player is, I thought he's had really good puck touches for a guy who hasn't had to play a lot of hockey over the last year or so. His puck skills were really good. So I think that was a good sign to me that he's feeling good and ready to go.”
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