TORONTO — A little over nine months ago, when Robby Fabbri arrived in a Toronto gym to begin a grueling, lonely rehab process, he struggled to stand up out of a chair.



Standing outside that same gym on a blistering late-August afternoon moments after stepping off a skate with longtime NHL skills coach Jari Byrski’s SK8ON team, he breathes a deep sigh of relief.



He’s close.



“We’ve come a long way. It has been a long road to get here,” Fabbri told The Athletic from inside Toronto’s St. Michael’s College Arena. “I don’t even know how many months it has been since I’ve played a game.”



After blowing out his knee on an innocuous hit from the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Carter Rowney in a game on Feb. 4 of his 2016-2017 season, Fabbri underwent surgery on a torn ACL, spent the summer rehabbing in St. Louis and was cleared for training camp by the end of July of last...