How Lightning's Mikhail Sergachev has battled back from serious injury

‘It was just a shock’

Sergachev didn’t sleep the night he was injured. He remembers going to the hospital in the ambulance, wincing in pain with every bump on the Manhattan streets. He didn’t have surgery until around 9 a.m., he said.

“It was just such a shock, an emotional roller-coaster,” Sergachev said. “That was definitely a tough night in New York.”

The injury occurred in Sergachev’s first game back after missing nearly seven weeks with a left leg injury. Just 10:22 of ice time; his season shattered under the bright spotlight of Madison Square Garden.

“There’s so many cameras and so many people watching,” defenseman Victor Hedman said. “So we’re (over him) trying to give him some privacy and let (head athletic trainer Tom Mulligan) do his job and then the paramedics do their job. So you just try to be there for him and try to give him some privacy.”

Lightning assistant strength and conditioning coach Lukasz Maras was by Sergachev’s side that night and through his time in New York. When Sergachev returned to Tampa, Maras would go to his house to begin rehab, initially doing exercises to maintain muscle in the leg. But being bedridden was difficult, Sergachev said.

“Just being in bed for like a week and a half and not being able to see what’s actually under there was tough,” Sergachev said.

“When they took the cast off it was scary to look at my leg because it’s so swollen and yellow and cut in all places. It was not a good look. That was the mental challenge for me, after seeing the leg, being confident stepping on it and then walking, then working all the muscles around the ankle and range of motion in the knee.”

Soon enough, Sergachev could walk with the aid of crutches, and when he shed them, his teammates celebrated by taking him out to dinner. He did a lot of rehab work in the pool, which Sergachev said was helpful to him gaining confidence in the strength of his leg.

“You learn a lot about yourself, honestly, how strong you are mentally,” Sergachev said. “The first three, four weeks, I kind of thought I was very weak because I couldn’t deal with it. But honestly, I don’t think there’s a lot of people who can because it’s such a gruesome injury, and it’s everywhere. Like you can watch it and see it, It’s not like a torn ACL where it’s just happened. This is kind of different.”

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