Suter, Parise face offseason recoveries following late-season injuries

ST. PAUL -- It was a nightmarish end to the 2017-18 season for the Wild's Zach Parise and Ryan Suter, in more ways than one.
Of course, the team lost to the Winnipeg Jets in the First Round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, a defeat that was punctuated with a change in the general manager's chair on Monday.
For Suter and Parise, however, the season ended with each facing injury rehabilitations heading into the offseason.

Parise's season began with numerous questions about his back, which flared up right before training camp. Microdiscectomy surgery followed and he missed half the season before returning from that.
Parise rounded into form around March 1, and went on a tear entering the postseason, scoring 12 goals over the final five weeks of the season and scoring one goal in each of the first three games of the playoff series against the Jets before a fractured sternum suffered near the end of Game 3 put a premature end to his campaign.
"Tough timing, you know? Kind of a meaningless shift at the end of the game," Parise said Monday. "Kind of a little bit of a freak thing and not what I was hoping for."
Suter never got to the playoffs.
With the Wild's postseason outlook improving in the final two weeks of the regular season, Suter went after a loose puck along the end wall in Dallas, a move he'd done hundreds of times this season.
But the defenseman appeared to catch an edge and when Stars' forward Remi Elie went to hit him, Suter's right foot crashed violently into the boards, fracturing his fibula near the ankle.
The All-Star blueliner now faces a summer where he won't be able to do much of anything for the next four months.

"So far, I've just been in a cast for three weeks now," Suter said on Monday. "This Thursday will be three weeks and I've got to do another week with the cast on. And then a couple more months without any pressure on it. I can't walk so it's going to be a long process."
The complexity of Suter's injury makes an exact timeline for his recovery difficult to gauge.
He was in a hard cast and on crutches at the rink on Monday but has a scooter to help him move around at home. Once the cast is removed, Suter can put no weight on his foot for a couple more months.
"We got a CT scan last week, but it's only two weeks in, so you can't really tell much from that," Suter said. "I think we'll do another CT scan in 10 or 11 more days and hopefully we'll start seeing something."
Suter said he plans on beginning upper-body workouts in the next couple weeks, which will hopefully keep him in fine shape for when he can begin lower-body workouts and an eventual return to the ice late in the summer or early this fall.
The goal for him is to be on the ice when the team comes together for training camp in September.
Parise's summer should resemble one much closer to normal.
Barely a week removed from when the injury occurred, Parise said he was sore but otherwise showed no other signs of his injury. He simply needs time; the original diagnosis kept him out week-to-week, but with the team's season completed, he needs patience.

"Other than taking a hit or getting punched in the chest, I can kind of do whatever," Parise said. "It just hurts a little bit when I breathe deep."
The expectation after that is a normal summer routine.
"They said it'll heal on its own," Parise said. "A few more weeks, and then get it checked out again."
Once Parise reached mid-season form, he was one of the team's top players. In limited postseason action, he was the Wild's most impactful forward.
Parise hopes a summer of training and additional time removed from the microdiscectomy surgery can have him feeling as good entering next season as he has in years.
That would certainly be a great sign for the Wild moving forward, and would be one less worry for whomever takes over the team's GM's job in the weeks ahead.

"It's tough to score at that rate. I'd love to, and I hope I do," Parise said. "The way I was feeling physically and moving around the ice, that was great. That's whether you're scoring or not. But I just know the way I was feeling and generating stuff, that was important."
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