Stars’ Matt Duchene offers NHL veteran’s perspective on taking vicious hit

When you’ve played 17 NHL seasons, you’re bound to get your bell rung a few times.

That’s what happened to Stars forward Matt Duchene this week, the 34-year-old caught unassuming by Minnesota defenseman Jake Middleto n in Tuesday night’s win over the Wild. With Duchene’s attention on corralling the puck, Middleton lowered his shoulder and ran through Duchene, forcing him out of the game and keeping him out through the Stars’ Thursday night matchup against Vancouver.

For Duchene, though, there’s no hard feelings: the grizzled veteran knows it’s part of the game, and has taken his recovery in stride as he returned to practice prior to Saturday’s matchup in St. Louis.

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Duchene appeared on The Sweet Spot on Sportsradio 96.7 FM/1310 The Ticket (KTCK-AM) on Friday where he discussed the hit and his pending return to game action, and he offered up some perspective on what goes into the recovery process after taking such a vicious hit.

See what Duchene had to say below.

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Question: Well, most importantly, how are we feeling?

Matt Duchene: “Feeling good, had a good practice today and hopeful [to play] tomorrow, hopefully no setbacks or anything like that. Tough to know with these things sometimes, don’t want to jinx anything but so far things are feeling better. I thought I was gonna be able to go last night [against the Canucks] and just didn’t feel good enough yesterday morning to commit to it. Any time you’re dealing with head stuff you gotta be overly careful.”

Q: Going back to the hit, Middleton put a shoulder into you, it’s upper-body … what did you make of the hit, did you think it was clean or did you take issue?

Duchene: “I don’t think he tried to hit me high, I don’t think he tried to hurt me necessarily. He is an opportunistic hitter, where he tries to catch guys in a vulnerable spot. He’s good at it, there’s guys like that in the league. And he timed it perfect, I kinda gotta tip my hat to him.

“I knew he was coming, I’m looking at the puck at my 5 o’clock and he’s coming at my 1 o’clock, so I can’t see him. He was there quicker than I thought he was gonna be. He definitely caught my head first, but I don’t think he tried to do that. I’m all cut up on my lip and above my chin so you can tell he got me there, but I’m not gonna sit here and say the guy should be suspended. I just think it was an unfortunate play.

“It’s just part of hockey. You catch those every now and then. I’m pretty good at avoiding them usually but I couldn’t really control that one, it was just wrong place, wrong time.”

Q: Well it seems like you’re mostly intact, you’re talking to us right now so your jaw obviously isn’t wired shut…

Duchene: “The worst thing I have right now is a wicked canker sore inside my lip, any time I get cut in the mouth, which has happened 400 times in my career, that’s the worst part. I’ll take 25 stitches all day long over one canker sore, they get so bad.

“So that part of my lip is still pretty swollen, like I said he hit me in the face before anything else. So, still have some soreness, it’s a car accident-type situation, so definitely have some soreness. But no concussion symptoms, we avoided even calling it that because I was able to test really well and didn’t have a ton of symptoms of a concussion. But I was wobbly getting up, I wasn’t all there getting off the ice, he definitely rang my bell. But we avoided anything like [a concussion].

“So that’s good, and like I said, we’ll see … We’re four games in, we wanna make sure I don’t miss more than I need to because I came back too quick.”

Click here to listen to the full interview.

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