Gina Kingsbury discusses Natalie Spooner's knee injury, surgery, timeline for return, and preparing for a possible start to next season without the league's leading scorer.
Gina Kingsbury discusses Natalie Spooner's knee injury, surgery, timeline for return, and preparing for a possible start to next season without the league's leading scorer.
Natalie Spooner suffered a knee injury in the PWHL semi-finals that required surgery this week. It's a situation that could result in Spooner being absent for the beginning or part of next season.
"As you can imagine every time you have surgery the timelines are a little longer than non-surgical injuries for the most part," said general manager Gina Kingsbury.
With the possibility of the league's top player from the inaugural season who led the league in scoring and goals being absent to start the year, Kingsbury says Toronto will use the draft and free agency to prepare in the event Spooner is unavailable.
"I think we're preparing here with this draft and free agency in the event she is not ready to start the season with us. If she does, great, if not we want to make sure we're doing our due diligence to equip our team with the players and the puzzle that would allow us to be successful in our absence and we will support her through this recovery period that she's going to go through here and looking forward to her return for sure and hopefully it's a prompt one."
Spooner had 27 points and 20 goals in 24 games this season.
Watch Kingsbury's full comments above.