Zucker took a puck just above the knee of the stick of Phoenix Coyotes' Shane Doan on January 9th and bounced between the press box and the ice until the Olympic break, when he went in for what was termed a "minor procedure" on the knee, but it turned out to be a quad injury instead.
“Honestly, it’s a fluky injury, one I’ve never heard of,” Wild General Manager Chuck Fletcher said. “When they initially went in, it was worse than they thought. They fixed it, but he re-aggravated it while training.”
Quadriceps refer to a group of four muscles in the thigh that cover the femur from the front and sides, each of the muscles attached in some manner to the hip and ranging down to the knee cap. The injury is most likely related to the tendon on the femoris muscle, which takes the brunt of work to extend and straightening the knee. It attaches to the kneecap from the top and works in conjunction to the Patella tendon attached to the kneecap from the tibia.
Fletcher noted that Zucker will need additional surgery to repair the tendon.
“It’s a setback, but he should be fine for next season,” Fletcher told reporters. “It’s frustrating it came to all this. I feel badly for the kid.”
The Wild are on course to make the playoffs despite sporting just a 3-2-4 record in the month of March, their 83 points good enough for the seventh seed in the Western Conference, four points better than current eighth seed Phoenix and eight points better than outside-looking-in Dallas Stars with 12 games to go.
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