Nolan Patrick will not be on the ice in Flyers development camp in July. The Flyers broke the news late Friday afternoon that Patrick had surgery back on June 13 to repair an abdominal injury — likely the already-known core injury issue he was dealing with this past season.
From the Flyers:
Nolan Patrick will not be participating in the on ice portion of next week’s development camp. Nolan had abdominal surgery on June 13th which related to his injury he dealt with this past season. The surgery was performed by Dr. William Meyers. Nolan will be able to resume full activity in 4-6 weeks from the date of surgery.
Now you could assume that the Flyers are trying to hide something here by sharing this on a Friday afternoon — that it’s “so Sixers” of them. It’s probably just that they always for whatever reason unveil the development camp news late in afternoons (2016, 2015, 2014, 2013), and they timed this announcement to go along with that unveil today.
In any event, the Flyers drafted Patrick with the full knowledge of his injury and surgery. It happened 10 days before the June 23 draft, and for a surgery that has a 4-6 week recovery time, that’s a pretty good amount of time to figure out whether if it’ll have a lasting impact.
On June 3, we wrote about the injury history and shared this bit from the AP:
Patrick had surgery to repair one side of his groin last summer, and now says he also required surgery to repair the other side, which was missed by initial testing. The 18-year-old says he kept quiet about the second injury during the season and decided to make the revelation while attending the NHL’s draft-eligible player combine in Buffalo this week.
Is it ideal that Patrick had a misdiagnosed injury and that he had to have surgery two weeks before he was drafted No. 2 overall? No, it’s obviously not ideal. Is it the end of the world and will it torpedo his NHL career? No, obviously not either. At the end of the day, I’m pretty confident that the Flyers did their homework before taking Patrick with that pick, particularly since the surgery was before the draft even happened.
The doctor who operated on Patrick is Philadelphia’s own Dr. William Meyers, and he’s known as one of the top core muscle injuries. Here’s a piece of a 2015 Fox Sports profile on him:
Chances are, if a professional athlete has had surgery to repair a core injury, Meyers was the guy who performed it — you could call him the James Andrews of the field in that way; the two are close friends — with more seeking his expertise each week.
Most recently, Meyers was in the news for his treatment of Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch, who underwent surgery last week to repair an abdominal injury, and over the years, he’s taken care of some of the world’s biggest stars, from Adrian Peterson and Arian Foster to Justin Verlander and Robinson Cano, with athletes from just about every level of every sport in between.
In more than three decades in the field, Meyers estimates he’s performed some 20,000 operations on these core muscles, which essentially comprise everything from mid-chest to mid-thigh (“the American League strike zone,” the Red Sox fan Meyers calls it), and the prevailing myth that Meyers aims to someday debunk is the one that all of them have been to fix the same thing.
Patrick will be ready for training camp.
