Breaking down latest Nicklas Backstrom injury update

On Saturday afternoon, the Washington Capitals gave an update on Nicklas Backstrom, who had been battling a nagging hip injury all of last season. Capitals Public Relations tweeted that Backstrom underwent left hip injury surgery on Friday. The surgery was performed at the ANCA Clinic in Belgium. Backstrom will begin his rehabilitation and lengthy recovery process immediately.

Frank Servalli of The Daily Face Off noted that two other NHL players had the same surgery. Ryan Kesler had it in 2019 and never played another game. Ed Jovanovski was the first to do it in 2013 and it took him a full year to rehab and then played in just 37 games before retiring.

He also tweeted a pic with more details on the surgery. That pic said: “Hip resurfacing is a form of hip replacement that helps provide pain relief and helps the patient lead a more normal life. Rather than replacing the head of the thighbone and the socket, however, during hip resurfacing the “femoral head” is trimmed down and capped with a smooth metal covering, and the damaged socket is removed and replaced with a metal shell.

It ended with this: “While a hip replacement usually marks the end of a career for high end athletes, hip resurfacing has given some hope to athletes who struggle with hip issues.”

In other words, there may be a possibility that Backstrom may sit out the entire 2022-23 season as part of that recovery process. But he underwent the surgery in hopes of not having to hang up his skates quite yet.

Tom Wilson will also be out for at least six to eight months. So the Caps will likely begin the season without two of their top six forwards. The silver lining is that the Caps may have a little more money to spend this offseason.

Wilson’s cap hit is $5,166,666 while Backstrom’s is $9.2 million, per Cap Friendly. That’s over $14 million in cap space to sign a top six forward to fill in the void and a veteran goaltender.