Brad Richardson’s Coyotes teammates rallied around him in the days, weeks and months after his surgery to repair a broken right tibia and fibula. Goalie Mike Smith brought beers to Richardson’s house and the two watched football. Forward Jordan Martinook showed up to absorb Richardson’s good-natured verbal abuse, and defenseman Luke Schenn picked up the veteran center and brought him to pregame lunches so he could feel a part of the team.

“That kind of stuff helps a lot because you’re kind of feeling isolated,” said Richardson, who suffered the injury in a road game against the Vancouver Canucks in November 2016. “Just to get out and B.S. with the guys for a little bit was a big boost, for sure.”

Richardson doesn’t worry about defenseman Jason Demers feeling cut off from the team because Demers has never suffered from a shortage of communication skills. In the days since Demers suffered a season-threatening lower-body injury in a 2-1 win against the Nashville Predators on Nov. 15, Richardson said Demers has been texting, calling and “always chirping about fantasy football.”

Overcoming a feeling of isolation through communication will be an important component in Demers’ quest to return, but it is just one of many challenges that he, injured center Christian Dvorak or any other player faces while recovering from a long-term injury. There are physical limitations that frustrate elite athletes so accustomed to extracting top performance from their bodies. There can be emotional challenges associated with being away from the game they love, or not seeing progress fast enough. And there can be setbacks, such as Dvorak experienced when he was a week away from returning from a previous injury, only to tear a pectoral muscle that will sideline him for months, perhaps the rest of the season.

“Every story is unique in the rehab process so you try to develop a relationship where it’s OK to talk about those things,” Coyotes strength and conditioning coach J.P. Major said. “We don’t always ask, and we don’t pry. Things happen very organically because you spend so much time together, but guys are not shy about saying, ‘Hey I’m having trouble with this,’ so a lot of our job is just to listen. It’s part strength and conditioning/rehab integration specialist and it’s part sports psychologist.”

Major said his staff, the medical staff and the training staff always lay out expectations for injured players to give them a rough map of the road ahead.

“Unless you’ve had the injury before you don’t know what the treatment plan is so we discuss it,” Major said. “We preface it up front by telling them, ‘Success isn’t linear.’ We tell them, ‘It’s just like when you’ve had setbacks in your career. There will be times when you feel down in the dumps.’ That’s where having an open dialogue is important so when they say, ‘I’m not feeling it today,’ we know not to push them.

“On the other hand, if they come in every day and say, ‘I want to push,’ you also need to have strong communication to help them understand you’re trying to maintain a steady line of progression and not have any major setbacks.”

Coyotes assistant general manager Steve Sullivan knows the challenges that long-term injuries present all too well. As a member of the Nashville Predators, Sullivan missed 678 days, 142 consecutive regular-season games and 11 playoff games due to a back injury on Feb. 22, 2007. He returned on Jan. 10, 2009. In that span, he stared down every imaginable demon.

Sullivan had dealt with back issues for several years. Initially, he figured the latest episode was just another flare-up.

“Every year, for three or four years, I would get out of whack so I would go see the chiropractor and do all the treatments and I’d always be back in seven days,” he said. “When this one happened, the last one, I just thought, ‘In seven days, I’ll be back.’ Then seven days came and I didn’t feel any better. Then it was 10, 15, two weeks, a month.”

During that training and rehab process, Sullivan had a setback that required a second procedure, further lengthening his timeline. The physical trials he faced were clearly challenge enough, but the greater impediment, he said, was lurking inside his head.

“We’re creatures of habit and we’re so used to feeling a certain way that when you don’t feel that way for a long period of time, it’s hard to get back to the point where you think you will ever feel normal again,” he said. “Your mind forgets what normal is. It plays tricks on you. You’re feeling things that maybe aren’t even there.”

Richardson said the first month or two after surgery was the hardest for him.

“When you can get into the shower without crutches and not have your mom taking your piss jug away from your bedside you think, “I’m getting in the clear a little bit,’” he said, laughing.

Some players deal with the drudgery of rehab better than others. Age, attitude and the nature of the injury all play a role in that mindset.

Defenseman Jakob Chychrun needed less than two weeks to get back into work mode after his second knee surgery in two seasons – this one a torn right ACL — sidelined him in April. He spent three months training and rehabbing with Bill Knowles, the director of reconditioning and athletic development at HPSports in Wayne, Pennsylvania. Both Knowles and Chychrun say he embraced the challenge from Day One.

“Some people might go crazy being there that long but I’m built different,” Chychrun said. “I don’t want to be there, but when I’m hurt I want to do everything possible I can to get better.”

When recently traded forward Brendan Perlini missed the first two months of the Niagara IceDogs’ 2014-15 season after breaking his hand in a Coyotes rookie game, he took the same approach as Chychrun, while finding joy in an unexpected place.

“I don’t enjoy being hurt but I very much enjoyed spending time with guys I never normally would,” he said. “I spent time with the trainers and a small group of guys who were injured. One guy had back spasms; another had a knee injury. When you’re injured, it’s almost like a little band of brothers trying to get better and get past this thing. You’re all in it together.”

Perlini said the hardest part of rehab for him was watching his team flounder.

“The team started the season like 2-13,” he said. “It was tough watching, thinking, ‘I could be out there helping these guys.’”

The length of Sullivan’s injury, the second procedure and the laborious rehab process made him wonder if he would ever be able to help his teammates again.

“You have episodes,” he said. “If I said I never wondered to myself, ‘Will I make it back?’ I’d be lying. Did I ever truly believe it? Probably not. I always believed I would come back but there were some dark periods. It was a tough stretch. Deep down at my core there was no way I wasn’t going to come back, but it was a difficult task and it was probably more mental than physical.”

Sullivan admits he added to his struggles by taking the opposite approach that Demers is taking.

“I pulled myself away from the team because I felt like I was a distraction,” he said. “The more you’re around, the more questions you hear like, ‘When’s he coming back?’ Or, ‘What’s wrong with him?’ I decided to pull myself away and it was probably the wrong thing to do. I would be watching the game from a box in the stands. I was getting bored so I started doing a segment in between the second and third period with the broadcast just to stay involved.

“I had some talks with a psychologist on staff because I was having an issue with identity, wondering ‘What am I? Who am I? What’s next because I’m not getting any better?’ He told me, ‘You have to decide: Are you a broadcaster or are you a hockey player?’ That was a big moment. I was doing rehab at a local place not to bother the guys because they are busy, but I asked, ‘Can I come back? I need to be around the guys. I need to feel like a hockey player again. Right now, I’m not a hockey player. I’m just a worker’s comp case.’ Just hanging around with the guys was the turning point where everything clicked and I knew I was coming back.”

While the various staffs involved in the recovery process use all sorts of data to guide their approach, Major said it is vital not to rely solely on the data.

“Richardson’s injury, a tib/fib break was a unique injury to say the least,” Major said. “It compromised a lot of joint mobility in the ankle joint so we had to understand where we needed to free up motion and where we needed to stabilize and strengthen so he could do the things he does.

“There’s a lot of things that work well for one guy and don’t for another so you have to think a little outside the box with exercise selection. You can’t always look at it through the same lens. You’ve got to read the player and then the injury second so I don’t have an exact template.”

Major and his staff also try to create the right atmosphere to help with the healing process.

“Even the setting matters, going from the medical room and doing stuff on the table to doing stuff in the gym,” he said. “We periodize some of what we’re doing there and transition some of those rehab-type exercises into the gym so guys can feel like, “I’m a regular player.’ From a psychological standpoint, that plays a big role.”

While the return to action is the most rewarding hurdle to cross, it is not the last. Once back, it takes time to round into game shape, physically and mentally.

“If you think of the NHL season as a train, the train is always moving,” Sullivan said. “You go from a training camp where there are different players at different levels so the train isn’t moving as fast. Then you get the beginning of the season, the mid-mark, the playoff push and the playoffs. There’s probably four or five times in the year where the speed picks up even more.

“Depending on your injury and when you’re ready to come back, how fast is that train moving? I’ve been standing still for a month, two months, four months and now this train is moving faster and I’m just going to jump on? That train is not slowing down for you so it’s about how fast can you catch up, jump on and get up to speed.

“The longer you’re out, the harder it is to get back to where you were. Your processing skills aren’t sharp. You feel like you can never anticipate. You’re always reacting. If that’s happening, you’re behind. If you have to think as a player, you’re dead. You know you can do it because you did it before, but it’s going to take some time. My strength was reading plays and when I came back I wondered sometimes, ‘Geez, will it ever come back?’”

It did for Sullivan, who won the 2009 Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy, awarded “to the player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey.” It did for Chychrun, who had to endure an additional two-game setback after his return in Detroit this month, due to an upper-body injury. It did for Richardson, who battled through pain all of last season, but has regained his jump, remained a valuable two-way center, and built uncommon chemistry with Michael Grabner on the Coyotes penalty-killing unit.

Richardson is confident it will also come back for Dvorak and for Demers, the latter of whom the Coyotes have not ruled out a return this season.

“It was tough with J.D. because he was thinking it was something not too serious; he was looking forward to only being out a couple weeks and now it’s longer so we’ll see what happens,” Richardson said. “I know he’s disappointed because he’s a guy that wants to be around the guys, and it’s especially hard for him because a lot of times, he’s the center of attention. Now he’s on an island, but I went over and saw him and hung out with him and the guys have been around.

“He’s got a long road, but I’m sure he’ll be fine, and I’m sure once he can be around the rink again, he will.”

(Photo of Jason Demers being helped from the ice Nov. 15: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)