Hurricanes’ Chatfield, Walker and Jarvis have no surgery plans for injuries after playoff run

RALEIGH N C AP Carolina Hurricanes players Jalen Chatfield Sean Walker and Seth Jarvis mentioned Friday they don t plan to have surgery for injuries after the band s playoff run to the Eastern Conference final Chatfield missed Carolina s last six games with what the defenseman described as a hip injury while fellow blue-liner Walker was dealing with an aggravation of a shoulder injury As for Jarvis the company s leader in regular-season goals and postseason points the forward declared he plans to work on strengthening and rehabbing a lingering right-shoulder issue for the second straight offseason Carolina is the only NHL squad with an functioning streak of winning at least one postseason series for seven straight years with this year s five-game loss to the reigning Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers marking a third trip to the Eastern final in that span Chatfield had missed the closeout tournament of the second-round series against Washington and then the entire Florida series The company had never specified the nature of Chatfield s injury which became a common question for coach Rod Brind Amour and he disclosed he should be fine with extra rehab time Just something in the hip Chatfield revealed during Friday s end-of-year player interviews It s hard when you get that trying to skate through that I just couldn t even get to that speed where I would even be capable of even helping the gang on the ice I was able to get back on the ice before the last championship and hopefully it was going to be another battle or two before I could return I was super close for sure Chatfield typically held a second-pairing spot with Dmitry Orlov before his absence and he scored Carolina s first postseason goal just into the opener against New Jersey Brind Amour at one point called Chatfield day to day in the most of optimistic update during his absence Making it as far as we did and being able to play against Florida it was tough watching Chatfield revealed The impact of Chatfield s absence compounded when Walker missed the last three games of the Florida series his last appearance coming in Championship after taking a jarring open-ice hit from A J Greer and eventually exiting early At that point Carolina was down two of its top six defensemen and playing rookies Alexander Nikishin and Scott Morrow with its season on the brink Walker reported he had suffered a minor shoulder injury late in the regular season that was improving through the postseason before the Greer hit set me back pretty significantly He declared he was hoping to return if Carolina advanced to the Stanley Cup Final but didn t need surgery Then there s Jarvis who led Carolina with assists and points in playoff games after tallying a team-best goals in regular-season games Surgery had been a possibility last year though he has focused on rehab and strengthening his shoulder We loved where it was at the start of the season in terms of the vitality of it and the strength and everything Jarvis noted Early on it kind of started to slip a little bit and then kind of re-tore all the work we did on it and all the strength and everything we did So just dealing with it again wasn t too bad kind of the same thing as last year Jarvis described the injury as creating more of an issue of pain tolerance than inhibiting on-ice activity I mean the only difference would be I d possibly be able to throw a real nice spiral Jarvis explained of surgery while the protective brace he returned to during the season might prevent him from reaching up to catch a puck He played all of Carolina s postseason games scoring the tying goal in the third period of Competition against Florida in what turned out to be the Hurricanes last of the season This summer we were dancing around the idea of what to do with it Jarvis mentioned The season s gone pretty late I don t want to miss a lot of time So I m going to go with the same protocol as last summer of strengthen it rehab it Hopefully maybe wear the brace from the very beginning of the year and then go from there AP NHL playoffs https apnews com hub stanley-cup and https apnews com hub nhl Source