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

TAMPA, Fla. — Mikhail Sergachev still can’t watch the video of the play that ended his regular season two months ago at Madison Square Garden.

It’s still too soon, and it brings up too many bad memories. The surgery scars on his left leg, above his knee, along the upper side of his inner calf and across the front of his ankle, already offer a daily reminder every time he puts on his gear.

The Lightning defenseman has learned that his journey back to the ice is best served focusing on looking forward, not back.

It has been nine weeks since Sergachev’s leg crumpled underneath the weight of his own body while battling for a puck in the Lightning’s first game after the All-Star break Feb. 7 against the Rangers; he broke both the fibula and tibia.

Sergachev returned to Lightning practice for the first time Monday, wearing a red no-contact jersey. He has been skating for nearly four weeks and is far from fully recovered — there’s still no definitive timetable on a potential postseason return — but he has learned a lot about himself coming back from the first major injury of his career.

“It’s just all about the mental side of things,” Sergachev said. “The leg is (fine). There’s a metal rod in there, so it’s not going anywhere. So that’s the main issue, the head. ... It’s just gaining confidence. What looks like normal things for everybody else, for me, it was kind of like Mount Everest it felt like.”

While his teammates prepare for the playoffs, Sergachev is concentrating on getting his strength back, which has been a methodical path that has included both good days and bad. He has had teammates to lean on, specifically captain Steven Stamkos, who broke his right leg sliding into a goal post in 2013. Like Sergchev, he was wheeled off the ice on a stretcher.

“Until you go through it, you don’t know what to expect, you don’t know how you’re going to react mentally and I think that is the hardest part,” Stamkos said.

“Physically over time things heal, right? You know that. It’s proven. It’s a fact. … Having gone through it, there are moments when you feel like you might never play hockey and then you kind of see the progression and then you get excited about it and then you’re pushing yourself towards the next goal and I just told him, it’s going to be that way.

“There’s going to be tough days, there’s painful days, but it’s gonna get better. And I think he’s at a point now where he’s excited about getting to that next level in his recovery and that’s great to see.”

‘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.”

Back on the ice

Sergachev had to learn to trust his leg with each step, from putting on skates for the first time March 18 to skating in full gear for the first time. Skating with teammates helped him mimic their technique on the ice.

He often skated before Lightning practices and on off-days under the supervision of head athletic trainer Tom Mulligan and assistant athletic trainer Mike Poirier. Skating coach Barb Underhill came into town to work with Sergachev on his technique.

“He’s super dedicated and works on his game all the time,” Hedman said. “I’m not worried at all when it comes to him. Like I’ve said before, the sky’s the ceiling for that guy.”

Sergachev said getting social media support from fans really helped boost his morale, especially on the difficult days when he felt like he wasn’t progressing or felt discomfort.

“I think fans helped a lot with me getting through this stuff,” Sergachev said. “And whenever I would post something, I’d get like 700 comments and they were all positive. That was great honestly. All kinds of fans, Rangers fans. Even Toronto fans.

“Some of them were saying some funny stuff. Like the one fan sent me a screenshot of me on the ice, like with my leg bent on the ice, and he was like, ‘Hey, man, you can’t play with your leg like that.’ The support from everyone was huge. Honestly, I don’t think I would have gotten through it. I probably would have, but I would be in a different mental state right now.”

A postseason possibility

The deeper the Lightning get in the playoffs, the more likely it is that Sergachev can return. Lightning coach Jon Cooper said Monday that if the Lightning win a round or two in the playoffs, “who knows?”

“I don’t think anybody truly understands how hard it is when you have those four-to-six month injuries, especially when the body is feeling better than it actually is,” Cooper said. “And so, when you think you can do things you really can’t ... the mental fatigue that people go through, it can’t go understated.”

Sergachev said that potentially helping his team on another deep postseason run certainly serves as motivation.

“I do think about that,” Sergachev said. “That serves as motivation. There’s timetables by the doctors and by the surgeon who did the surgery. I’m doing my best to beat that, to maybe come back sooner than they say, but it’s very unpredictable, these things, because you have to build muscle and muscle doesn’t get built in a day.

“But obviously, I think to myself, I want to come back as soon as possible, but I can’t really talk about time. But we’ll see. If I feel good, I’ll play. If I don’t feel confident enough that I can help the team, obviously there is no need.

“The team’s doing good,” he added with a smile. “They don’t need me.”

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