Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Devils go from bad to worse: Zach Parise out three months with torn meniscus

60184_penguins_devils_hockey-zachparise
It’s just not the kind of start any team wants to have for their season and for the New Jersey Devils, things are about as bad as they’ve ever been. Not only have the Devils been terrible this year starting off the season with a 3-9-1 record while scoring a league low 20 goals in those 13 games, but now they’ll be without one of the team’s biggest point producers in Zach Parise for the next three months. Rich Chere of the Newark Star-Ledger shares the grim details.

Devils left winger Zach Parise will be sidelined for three months after having surgery today to repair a torn meniscus in his right knee.

Parise was sent home after aggravating the problem during Saturday night’s game in Los Angeles.

This means the Devils will be without Parise until at least early February.


This is a crushing blow for a team that is mired in an abysmal start to the season and with the Devils not finding much good luck on or off the ice, the psychological state of the locker room has to be in disarray. A season that started out with a team that looked set to challenge anyone in the Eastern Conference is now staring some ugly realities in the face. They haven’t been able to score goals, they’ve had a hard time keeping their composure in their own end defensively, and they’ve been bitten ferociously by the injury bug.

What remains curious about this is how Parise stated that he was injured back in August training to get ready for the season. After going through training camp and the early part of the season with a torn meniscus, you can’t help but wonder if either the Devils knew about it or if Parise kept it to himself. If this was discovered sooner, perhaps some time could’ve been saved on getting him back in the lineup.

Parise now joins Brian Rolston and Bryce Salvador on the long term injured reserve, meanwhile they’re also dealing with minor injuries to Anton Volchenkov, Jacob Josefsen, and Matt Corrente. When starters and reserves are all getting banged up, it’s just crushing for a team to fight through and unfortunately the guy stuck taking the heat for all of it is head coach John MacLean. Being a first year coach is tricky enough, getting this sort of mess thrown your way right out of the gate just stinks.

How will the Devils answer the bell after getting the latest and most destructive piece of news will be interesting to watch. The team has looked bad during this terrible start and now that they’ll be without one of the team’s best offensive talents will make for interesting drama in New Jersey. The heat might not be on the players this time around and while Lou Lamoriello’s job is never in doubt, he’s going to take heat from others about this. Even former Devils stud Bobby Holik is being critical of the team, singling out Ilya Kovalchuk’s contract as the source of problems for the team. That’s a bit far fetched for Holik to say, but after everything that went down this summer surrounding Kovalchuk’s negotiations with the Devils, it’s an illogical conclusion many will draw from things.

If there’s ever been anything that fans should know by now through all this, however, it’s to never doubt the Devils. If they can get back on track and deal with the next three months and get Parise back in the lineup to give the team a lift while they’re treading water, does anyone actually doubt whether or not the Devils can make the playoffs again? I didn’t think so. Until then, the Devils mettle is going to be tested in a major way.