Misdirecting the media regarding injuries is as much of a Stanley Cup playoff tradition as growing a beard.



Joe Thornton, of course, already had the latter when he suffered a serious left knee injury in Vancouver on April 2, just a week-and-a-half before the Sharks were to begin the postseason. Perhaps that’s why he felt the need to overcompensate on the former when talking about his injury, because when you look back on some of his quotes from the days after he was hurt, they are, frankly, comical.



“The next morning I woke up, no swelling, no nothing. Probably like a bruise, I guess,” Thornton said on April 5. He also said that an MRI on the knee revealed that “everything was fine.”



The truth was drastically different, as everyone would soon learn. Thornton’s MCL “was gone,” he said this week, there was damage to his ACL, and he had surgery just two days after the season ended.



Suffice it to say, he...