Canucks LW Chris Higgins is expected to miss Tuesday’s game against Colorado due to a foot infection.
Seriously! These things can be brutal. Just ask Higgins -- he had a Staph infection last season in Florida that cost him six games.
“I got a big zit on my foot, it was disgusting,” Higgins told NHL.com’s Kevin Woodley. “I’ve never seen anything like it, it just came out of nowhere and I guess it was pretty dangerous. They tried a couple of different antibiotics, didn’t work right away, and then after the third or fourth one it worked.
“It was scary because it came out of nowhere and my foot was like five times the size of normal in hours -- from a dot to totally blown up.”
Higgins woke up this morning with a swollen foot (after scoring the winning goal last night against Calgary) and recognized the symptoms immediately. That didn’t stop him from showing his foot to head coach Alain Vigneault, who recoiled in horror, then spoke to the media.
“Chris came in this morning and his foot was all swollen up. According to what he is telling us, he had the same thing happen to him last year in Florida,” Vigneault said. “They initially thought it was a skate bite and then they thought it was a spider bite and then they finally figured out it was a Staph infection. Hopefully with their experience in the past they can get this under control real quick.”
Just to quash any rumors or theories, the Staph infection wasn’t for a lack of cleanliness. Higgins is a serial gear-washer; chances are he’s washed his pads twice in the amount of time it took you to read this.
“I washed my equipment more than anybody else I’ve ever seen, even before I got the Staph infection. I wash it two or three times a week and there are guys that never wash it,” he said last season. “It’s scary that something like that can happen. I felt something weird and then after the game I took my boot off and it swelled up in two hours.”
With Higgins out, the Canucks recalled Victor Oreskovich from AHL Chicago. He’s believed to be infection-free.