Langenbrunner has season-ending injury

Cloquet native Jamie Langenbrunner made it through the National Hockey League lockout only to have his season derailed by a hip injury.

Langenbrunner, 37, has a torn labrum in his left hip and will undergo surgery, which would likely mean a five- to six-month rehabilitation process. It will be the end of Langenbrunner’s 2013 season and possibly his 18-year NHL career.

The winger is working under a one-year, $1.25 million contract with the Blues, and will become an unrestricted free agent in June.

“Not exactly the way you envision things,” Langenbrunner said in an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “You battle through the lockout, try to get yourself ready to go and then obviously the body didn’t cooperate. But it’s something hopefully you get taken care of, hopefully you feel that much better and you’re able to try going at it next year.”

A veteran of 1,109 NHL regular-season games and 146 in the postseason, including Stanley Cup championships with Dallas and New Jersey, Langenbrunner is aware of the potential consequences of the surgery.

During the lockout, while spending time with his family, Langenbrunner claimed to have overcome the fear of retirement.

While waiting for the start of the season, Langenbrunner took an active role in coaching his two sons – one a Pee Wee hockey player and the other a Squirt – in the St. Louis area.

He told Pine Journal reporter Jeff Papas it was a great experience.

“Youth hockey in St. Louis involves a lot of travel,” Langenbrunner explained. “We took some trips to Chicago and some trips to Detroit. Being around their teams was fun, getting to know their friends and their lives was great too.”

Langenbrunner’s daughter is a freshman at Shattuck-St. Mary’s Academy in the Twin Cities and plays soccer.

Langenbrunner, who broke into the NHL with Dallas in 1994, will start his 18th season in the league next week after playing 70 games last year.

He scored six goals and added 18 assists in 2011-12 to bring his career totals to 243 goals and 419 assists for 662 points in 1,105 games.

Before his injury, he’d had one assist in four games thus far.

Langenbrunner had been playing with the injury recently, but decided he needed to have surgery after he started losing both strength and stability. After Tuesday’s loss to Nashville, he said his leg went numb after the game.

Blues coach Ken Hitchcock is adopting a wait and see attitude, just like Langenbrunner.

Tags: sports, cloquet, hockey