ANAHEIM, Calif. — With his Wild teammates 2,100 miles away set to begin a final three-game road trip Wednesday in advance of next week’s playoffs, Ryan Suter was in Green Bay, Wisconsin, meeting with an ankle expert because he requires a very specialized kind of surgery on an injury that rarely occurs to a professional athlete.



Not only did the veteran defenseman break his right fibula Saturday night against the Dallas Stars, an MRI revealed that Suter also fractured the talus bone in his ankle.



The bone, which is located between the heel and the fibula and tibia in the lower leg, is vital for ankle movement. It’s the type of injury that usually happens to people in car accidents or high-velocity falls and one Suter will have repaired Thursday at noon.



“They were saying if I was a soccer player, a baseball player, a basketball player, this could basically be the end, a career-ending injury,” Suter told The Athletic by phone.