Zach Parise speaks about surgery and life off the ice
New Jersey Devils forward Zach Parise spoke with NHL.com for the first time after having surgery to repair the meniscus in his right knee on Wednesday, 4 November. He discussed how he's adjusting to life off the ice.
"I'm never comfortable," Parise said about life since the injury. "Just right now, even sitting down, it hurts. Walking is tough. Nothing is comfortable and that makes it really frustrating. I feel bad for my girlfriend, she's taking care of me and I'm sitting
around, kind of useless."
Up until the surgery, Parise had been a model of health for the Devils, missing only three games over the last five seasons.
Parise allegedly hurt his knee over the summer, and when the season began, things got progressively worse before he decided to have the knee scoped to determine the extent of the injury.
That's when the torn meniscus was found and repaired. Parise is now expected to be out of the Devils' lineup for the next three months.
"Right away, your stomach kind of drops because I've been pretty fortunate that I've never been injured and then something like this happens," Parise said. "It had gotten to the point where it was so uncomfortable playing that I knew something was wrong
and I needed to get it fixed.
"I felt unstable. I felt like I got knocked down and knocked off the puck way too easily and I would always twist it. When you're not confident going into the corner with somebody, that's when you know something is definitely wrong. It's just something I
needed to get fixed and everything will be fine."
The Devils have had one of their worst starts to the season in recent years and currently sit a single point off the bottom of the Eastern Conference.
Parise is confident in his team's ability to turn things around, even with him out of the lineup. "We've already got a lot of injuries, we're not playing that great, but I'm confident the guys will be fine and still pull out of this funk that we're in without
me. I am confident that we'll get things straightened out, get things figured out."
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