It might be too much to call it a moment of rejoicing, but at the very least, it was a moment of levity.
Rangers coach Alain Vigneault swung his right hand in the air and smiled, delivering the words about his star player Rick Nash like a giddy schoolboy before Tuesday night’s 3-2 loss to the Devils.
“He’s going to practice tomorrow!” Vigneault said. “Isn’t that the news you wanted to hear?”
It was funny because for a full month, Vigneault has had very little to say about Nash, concussed on a hit from Brad Stuart in San Jose way back in the first period of the team’s third game of the season on Oct. 8. He missed his 15th game in a row on Tuesday, but since he started skating on his own last week, Vigneault has made it a point to start checking in.
“Since I’ve seen him on the ice before practice and after practice, every day I’ve asked how he’s doing,” Vigneault said. “[Tuesday] I got the call after the morning skate that he was going to join the team [Wednesday].”
Of course, Vigneault knows it won’t come in one fell swoop, even if the team’s next game isn’t until Saturday in Montreal. The plan was for Nash to start practicing as an eighth defenseman, in the same way Dominic Moore (strained oblique) did in Monday’s practice, and as Carl Hagelin and Ryan Callahan did in recovering from their respective offseason shoulder surgeries.
“He’ll be a ‘D’ for a practice or two,” Vigneault said. “And then when we find that his conditioning is where it needs to be, and he’s been totally cleared medically, we’ll put him on a line and we’ll go from there.”
Nash worked for the first time all season at the Garden on Tuesday morning, putting in an hour of hard skating drills in an attempt to regain his wind.
“A little out of shape,” he told the team’s website after the skate, attended only by the injured players and scratches. “But the important part is, I feel good otherwise.”
For a while, it was not known whether Nash was going to be able to say that with certainty ever again. He had suffered a concussion last season, which sidelined him for four games, and early on, this latest one continued to give him headaches. He never felt the worse effects other concussion sufferers face, such as nausea or sensitivity to light, but the concussion still kept him from working out for a long time.
He did go to Michigan to see a specialist, Dr. Jeffrey Scott Kutcher, and received positive feedback.
“He didn’t see any long-term effect,” Nash said. “That was the best news.”
Nash, 29, was obtained in a mega-trade with the Blue Jackets before last season, and carries a $7.8 million salary-cap hit through the 2017-18 season. In light of that, he was not short-sighted about getting back from this injury.
“When you look at it, New York’s invested a lot in me, and I’ve invested a lot in them,” Nash said. “So even if we were losing, it’d be stupid to rush back just because of that. It’s a long-term contract, and we want to make sure from both sides that I come back at 110 percent and ready to play.”
Now it’s up to Vigneault to find out when that is, and incorporate Nash into a team that had recovered from their bad start by winning seven of their past nine games entering play Tuesday night.
“With concussions, you never know,” Vigneault said. “He’s made some big strides, and hopefully he’ll continue on a daily basis to make strides.