Shoulder surgery has Christensen feeling positive

By GREGG DRINNAN
Daily News Sports Editor
Erik Christensen has a new contract; he just doesn’t know when he’ll be ready for a new season.
Christensen, the last member of the Kamloops Blazers to win a WHL scoring title, signed a one-year deal worth US$750,000 with the NHL’s Anaheim Ducks on Wednesday, less than a month after undergoing major surgery on his right shoulder.
“I’m going to be questionable for training camp,” Christensen said Thursday from Edmonton, following his first rehab session.
Christensen, who will turn 26 on Dec. 17, said he originally was injured when, while with the Pittsburgh Penguins, he was hit by then-Ottawa Senators defenceman Zdeno Chara.
“It happened a couple of weeks before I was traded” to the Atlanta Thrashers, said Christensen, who finished the season after an MRI showed the joint to be only bruised. On Feb. 26, 2008, Christensen, Colby Armstrong, Angelo Esposito and a 2008 first-round draft pick were traded to Atlanta for Marian Hossa and Pascal Dupuis.
“It felt good,” Christensen said of training camp last fall. “But I hurt it again in camp and was out for a couple of weeks.”
He came back, “played a week or two” and hurt it again in Montreal. Again, an MRI didn’t show any damage.
On March 4, he was traded by Atlanta to the Ducks — for junior-aged centre Eric O’Dell — and, as the season ended, a team doctor decided to go in and take a look. Christensen, who finished the season with 28 points in 64 games, underwent surgery on June 4 in Los Angeles and spent three weeks in a sling.
“It was arthroscopic,” Christensen said, adding that he had three holes — in the front, back and side of the shoulder.
“They basically did four surgeries in one,” he explained. “They found a bunch of things, a bunch of tears . . . it was a mess.
“I was pretty lucky to be playing with the condition my shoulder was in. I’m not a physical guy to begin with but it’s tough to go into a corner not knowing what your shoulder is going to do. I remember reaching for passes and my shoulder would kind of pop out.
“If I got hit a certain way or if I hit someone a certain way and I felt it come out, it would just go dead for like 10 minutes. I’m assuming that something happened when I got hit by Chara, a tear . . . and every time I reinjured it, because it was weak and unstable it would cause another tear or a stretching of the labrum . . . there are a bunch of things that could have happened.”
Now the sling is gone and he is on the long, hard rehab road.
He said his timetable depends entirely on how rehab goes. The physiotherapist with whom he is working “is supposed to be pretty aggressive,” Christensen said, “. . . we’ll see how I feel after the first couple of weeks of rehab.
“I’m hoping a couple of weeks of aggressive rehab will help me come back quicker.”
Christensen, who suffered a slight knee injury late in 2007-08, said this is his first “major injury” and added that he really is looking forward to being healthy, something he really hasn’t been since that hit by Chara.
“Everything was really tightened up and it’s really stiff right now,” said Christensen, who led the WHL in goals (54) and points (108) in 2003-04 while with the Blazers. “I joked with the doctor, ‘Why don’t you do the other one, just for the helluva it, so they both feel equally sound?’
“But once I’m back it’ll feel twice as strong.”
Of course, this means that Christensen, who owned a condo in Aberdeen before selling it last summer, isn’t playing golf these days, so he may not return to Kamloops for the Blazers’ alumni weekend at Sun Peaks, Aug. 7-8. He suggested, however, that he could play should the Blazers move the event to the West Edmonton Mall’s mini-golf course.
“Yeah, I could do that,” he said with a laugh.
With his contract out of the way, Christensen said he is watching closely to see just who else will be back with the Ducks.
“Robbie Niedermayer and Todd Marchant are two guys we’d really like back,” he said. “I keep refreshing my phone to see what’s going on.”
Losing defenceman Chris Pronger, who was dealt to the Philadelphia Flyers, is a “big loss,” Christensen said, “but we have a lot of guys who make some pretty good dough so . . . someone had to go who makes that kind of money.”
The Ducks still have Scott Niedermayer, Ryan Whitney and James Wisniewski on defence, though, and Christensen said he’s watching to see what happens with goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere, who has been rumoured on his way to the Toronto Maple Leafs if they are unable to sign Swedish goaltender Jonas Gustavsson.
“A lot of guys on the team like Brian Burke,” Christensen said, alluding to the former Ducks‚ general manager who now runs the Leafs.
gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca
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