Montreal Victoire captain Marie-Phillip Poulin will miss significant time next season as she recovers from knee surgery, but that doesn't change the fact that she's the cornerstone of the franchise.
The Montreal Victoire revealed that captain Marie-Philip Poulin will be undergoing major knee surgery this offseason. Captain Clutch has a torn anterior cruciate ligament and a damaged meniscus. While the team stopped short of providing a timetable for her return, it’s clear that she fully intends to be back.
On average, that kind of operation involves at least nine months of rehabilitation. In other words, she could potentially miss most, if not all, of the season.
Following the news, some have raised questions about Daniele Sauvageau’s decision to protect the captain ahead of the Expansion Player Redistribution Process. Going as far as saying that the GM should have elected to protect Erin Ambrose instead of Poulin. That wouldn’t, however, have worked.
Of course, Poulin could have pulled a Carey Price ahead of the Vegas Golden Knights’ expansion draft and let it be known that she was injured, but given the fact that she wants to come back, she could hardly say she didn’t think she would ever play again. That would have been dishonest, and that’s one thing Poulin definitely isn’t.
The captain’s situation is quite different from Blayre Turnbull's, who has decided to start a family and had let it be known to the expansion teams. Furthermore, Turnbull was on an expiring contract and therefore didn’t need to be protected, on top of having assured GM Gina Kingsbury that she wouldn’t be signing anywhere else. It’s a similar situation in Minnesota with Kendall Coyne Schofield, who continues to ponder her own future as well.
Had Poulin been left unprotected without saying that she didn’t think she could play again, chances are that an expansion team would have picked her up. How could four teams be expected to pass on a player who is arguably still the best in the game? While she was skating on one leg in the Walter Cup playoffs, Poulin still won the Playoff MVP title. Who better to sell women’s hockey in a new market?
By protecting Poulin and letting Ambrose go, Sauvageau knew what she was doing. Losing the blueliner helped give her the cap space needed to make a splash in free agency to soften the blow of Poulin’s long-term absence. Given the fact that Poulin wants to be back in the PWHL, there was no other way Sauvageau could play her hand.
At the press conference on Thursday morning, the captain said:
I played as best I could with a torn ACL and meniscus because I wanted to be part of this journey that led us to hoist the Walter Cup. It was with this goal in mind that I worked tirelessly to return to the game this season. It has become clear that if I want to continue playing at a high level, surgery is necessary. In the short term, it’s a difficult choice, but if I take a step back and think about the years ahead, the decision is obvious. I’m going to focus all my energy on my recovery once the surgery is done so that I can return to the game in the best physical form possible.
In the statement released by the team, she also added:
My goal is to play hockey for as long as I can, in the best possible health.
That doesn’t sound like a player who’s getting ready to call it quits; leaving her unprotected would have been a huge gamble and one that Sauvageau understandably wasn’t willing to make.
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