Red Wings outlook: Stephen Weiss

Stephen Weiss underwent surgery twice last season due to a sports hernia that was diagnosed in December.

(The Associated Press)

TRAVERSE CITY – Injuries are inevitable, but the Detroit Red Wings have had more than their share the past two seasons.

Nothing can be done to prevent broken bones, sprained ligaments, concussions and the like, but as the club prepares to take the ice for the start of training camp on Friday, general manager Ken Holland said the organization has discussed ways of reducing "soft tissue injuries," the most common being groin pulls.

"Certainly in the month of September and into early October you expect hip flexors, you expect tender groins," Holland said. "I'm talking more when you get past the middle of October and into November; last year we seemed to have too many people down with soft tissue (injuries).

"Again, we don't know. I don't have any answer for you. That's what we talked about. When you have people down with concussions or back surgery and things like that there's nothing you can do. That's the nature of the game, how hard the game is. So that (soft tissue injuries) is the one thing we've talked about. We're going to try to be a little bit more proactive and we'll see what happens."

The Red Wings had 421 man-games lost to injury in 2013-14, second in the NHL to Pittsburgh (529), according to mangameslost.com. Detroit didn't fare much better the year before, ranking third with 243 man-games lost in the 48-game lockout-shortened season.

"Unacceptable, 100 percent unacceptable," coach Mike Babcock said. "Is the coach pushing them too hard? Is the strength coach pushing them too hard? Are we not doing a good enough job in the therapy room? Are we not getting enough outside help? Are we not on top of it? Are we overtraining them? We've been through everything.

"I have lots of theories on it, but I'm not going to tell you any of them. We'll just fix it."

Whether players are training too hard or not training the right way, nobody seems to know for sure, or they would have corrected it last season.

"The longer you play, the older you get, the more you learn about your body, what you need, and maybe sometimes guys go too hard without listening to their bodies," forward Johan Franzen said. "But I think after the last two years, the whole team and trainers are putting a lot of focus on getting to the bottom of why it's happening, getting second opinions."

Several players said the high number of groin injuries hasn't altered their off-season training routine.

"I don't think you can really do much besides train hard in the summer and get your body ready for the long season," Justin Abdelkader said. "Injuries are going to come; you just hope they don't all come at once, which they did for us last year."

The Red Wings' best players, Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg, were limited to 45 games each last season. But their injuries (knee for Datsyuk, back for Zetterberg) were more due to years of wear and tear.

Stephen Weiss missed all but 26 games due to a sports hernia, a condition he admits to have exacerbated by trying to play through the pain at the start of the season. Jonathan Ericsson missed 48 games with three separate injuries (shoulder, ribs, finger), the result of contact during games.

Others, like Darren Helm and Jonas Gustavsson, have been injury-prone for reasons unknown the past few years.

"Certainly I think we all get frustrated -- the players, our training staff, our coaches, management -- when you have too many people down during the middle of the year due to soft tissue injuries," Holland said. "We're going to do some different things. We're going to reach outside the organization maybe quicker to get other opinions.

"But that's the biggest frustration, the soft tissue injuries. Again, the other injuries like broken bones (top prospect Anthony Mantha is out 6-8 weeks with a fractured tibia), it is what it is, there's nothing we can do to prevent it, there's nothing we can do to quicken the healing process."

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