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Report: Matt Cooke (lower body) could be done for year

Cooke

One of the league’s more infamous players might be shelved for the remainder of the campaign.

Minnesota forward Matt Cooke, who barely played in the third period of Sunday’s win over Vancouver, is being held out of the lineup for tonight’s game against Chicago and could be out a “longer period of time,” per Wild head coach Mike Yeo.

More, from the Star-Tribune:

I’m hearing via sources that the veteran will likely need season-ending surgery. If you do the math and connect the dots, Cooke has been playing with a sports hernia.

Yeo called it a lower-body injury today. I’m certain this has nothing to do with the Rob Klinkhammer kneeing in Edmonton last Tuesday that left Cooke with a charleyhorse.

Cooke missed 22 games from Oct. 30-Dec. 17 with a hip flexor. He was injured the second game of the season at Colorado and played with the injury the next six games in agony. As it turns out, Cooke told me in December this was no normal hip flexor injury. He had three torn muscles, including the Psoas Major, which attaches to the femur, and two other supporting hip flexor muscles.

As the above graphs suggest, this has been a trying season for Cooke health-wise. He’s only played 27 games while averaging roughly 12-and-a-half minutes per night, this after appearing in all 82 a season ago (while scoring 10 goals and 28 points.)

With Cooke out, the Wild have recalled Jordan Schroeder from AHL Iowa.