The Islanders’ season is all but over and now Doug Weight’s officially is. His career, he hopes, is not.
The 39-year-old team captain announced yesterday that he will have surgery to repair the torn rotator cuff and labrum in his left shoulder that he has been playing with for the past two months.
And although Weight won’t be back on the ice this year, he said he intends to return next year.
“It’s a pretty intrusive surgery, but I’m going into it with aspirations of still playing hockey,” Weight said before the Isles hosted the Devils at the Coliseum last night, adding that he’s shooting to be 100 percent by September. “I still have the fire in my stomach. My legs feel very strong. The rest will be written in the summer. . . . But if Thursday was my last game, I’ll have no regrets.”
Weight’s play clearly was impacted by the injury. He had just one goal and 16 assists after opting to rehab the shoulder instead of getting surgery immediately.
“Any other player probably would have had surgery back in January,” Isles coach Scott Gordon said. “He was very unselfish about it. He could have just packed it in and he didn’t.”
Gordon said most of Weight’s teammates probably weren’t aware of the severity of the injury, but Matt Moulson and John Tavares, who have been living with Weight, did.
“We talk to him,” Moulson said. “We know it’s excruciating for him. But we knew how much he wanted to play. He’s playing with nothing on his shoulders.”
Weight, who will be a free agent, was limited to just 36 games this year, a career low and said that he spent most of his shifts worrying about worsening the damage.
“That’s no way to play the game,” said Weight, who made the decision on Friday and told his teammates yesterday. He won’t be replaced as captain for the remainder of the year. “Enough is enough. My mind was elsewhere, trying to compensate. But I feel like I didn’t hurt the team.”
And if the Isles still had a realistic shot at the postseason, Weight said, he “probably would be delaying it.”
Nevertheless Weight would still like to make another run at the postseason somewhere.
“That’s what my goal is,” Weight said. “Physically, I can still do it. It’s not my age, it’s the injury.”