San Jose Sharks: The Ballad of Raffi Torres

When the San Jose Sharks acquired Raffi Torres during the 2013 season he was expected to bring speed and grit to the team as part of Doug Wilson’s “reset and refresh” mentality. At the time many fans were unwilling to embrace this trade regardless of what he may bring because of his prior “incidents” including the 2006 playoffs when he injured San Jose Shark, Milan Michalek. However, this would be short-lived as Torres immediately gelled with Joe Pavelski on the third line. Unfortunately, Torres has not been able to stay in the Sharks roster due to both a debatable suspension in the 2013 playoffs and a torn ACL suffered in the 2014 pre-season.

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2013-14 Season Review

After recovering from the ACL injury suffered during the pre-season, Torres returned to action on February 27th, 2014. Regrettably, he would only play five games before sitting out the rest of the season due to “general soreness.” Still Torres made his presence felt in those five games, compiling 5 points and hitting everything in sight. During a season where the Sharks had 297 man games lost due to injury any time a regular was on the ice was refreshing.

Offseason Events

It appears Raffi Torres will again be out for at least half of the season this time due to an infection in the same knee. He already underwent a procedure in Toronto to remove the infected graft, which was taken from a cadaver by Sharks Doctor, Arthur Ting. Torres still has to undergo another procedure to again repair the ACL, but this time the plan is to harvest from Torres own tissue and not a cadaver. No word yet on who will do the procedure, but for Tomas Hertl’s procedure the Sharks chose Cleveland Doctor, Anthony Miniaci.

2014-15 Prediction

Because Torres still has not undergone the actual repair surgery to his ACL expect him to again miss half the season. Last year it took five months until he played a game as his surgery was in September and he returned in February. Assuming they are still waiting for the swelling to dissipate after his procedure from a few weeks ago, expect Torres to go under the knife sometime in September. That being said the timetable for his return should be similar to last season. If the surgery is flawless he may play up to 42 games, and if it requires more time to recover he should still be back on the ice by March. With this in mind expect more of the same hard hitting play from Raffi Torres in 2015.