Toronto Maple Leafs forward John Klingberg will miss the rest of the season with a hip injury.
The defenseman, who was placed on long-term injured reserve on Nov. 23, will undergo surgery and his recovery is expected to take five to six months.
“It’s the end of December and effectively his season is over,” Maple Leafs general manager Brad Treliving said Wednesday. “As we finalize what to do with everything, and ultimately how long the rehabilitation will take, we’ll have a better idea once the surgery is over, but it would be wrong to say it’s in the range of five to six months.” there is no.”
Klingberg last played on Nov. 11 in a 5-2 win over the Vancouver Canucks, recording a plus-one point at 7:00 p.m. The day after he missed his first game of the season, a 5-on-4 shootout against the Calgary Flames.
The Gothenburg, Sweden, native traveled to Sweden with the Maple Leafs for the 2024 NHL Global Series presented by Fastenal, but did not play in the two games in Toronto on Nov. 17 and 19. .
“He’s disappointed, just like any other player. You’re disappointed,” Treliving said. “He was hoping that wouldn’t happen, but once he made that decision and once it was finalized, he went to step two and got through it and finished the procedure and got ready for rehab and got there. Start from.”
“The option we looked at was patchwork and he tried to do that. This really worsened in Game 4 (October 19) against Florida and then he was patchwork for a few weeks. So ultimately we wanted to take the time to think about how to get the best results and ultimately do this. ”
Klingberg, who signed a one-year, $4.15 million contract with Toronto on July 1, has played in 14 games this season and has five assists and a minus-7 rating. He played in 67 games with the Minnesota Wild and Anaheim Ducks last season, scoring 33 points (10 goals and 23 assists).
“The injury was affecting him,” Treliving said. “It’s important whenever you get to a point where you have to do procedures. They’re not just done to get the procedure done.”
The Maple Leafs are also without defenseman Mark Giordano, who is out week to week with a broken finger, and Timothy Liljegren, who hasn’t played since Nov. 2 with a lower-body injury.
Toronto has used 10 defensemen this season, including Simon Benoit (10 games), Connor Timmons (5 games) and Max LaJoia (1 game). Morgan Rielly and TJ Brody are the only two players to appear in all 22 games.
Klingberg’s NHL salary cap charge will keep him on long-term injured reserve for the remainder of the season, giving the Maple Leafs more flexibility to add players through trades.
“You have clarity, which is very important as opposed to saying he’s going to (come back) or not,” Treliving said. “We’ve been through this period of either he’s there or he’s not. I never like to see a player go down, but right now it’s clear he’s not going to be available for us. So the next Players.’ And managers need to keep looking at the group how we can help ourselves. ”
The Maple Leafs (12-6-4), fifth in the Atlantic Division, visit the Ottawa Senators on Thursday (7 p.m. ET, RDS2, TSN4, TSN5).