In a scoreless game against the Chicago Blackhawks at Climate Pledge Arena on Nov. 14, Seattle Kraken captain Jordan Eberle sprinted after defenseman Connor Murphy, hoping to strip him of the puck and create an offensive opportunity just 17 seconds into the second period.

Eberle lunged, trying to lift Murphy’s stick, but as he did so, he lost his footing. Both players went down and began careening out of control across the freshly resurfaced ice, destined for a hard, dangerous slam into the end wall. Murphy was lucky to go into the boards feet first, but Eberle was in a more vulnerable position, prone on his stomach as he crossed the goal line. A split second before impact, he managed to twist his body backward, absorbing the crash with his lower back instead of his head and neck.

While he did well to position himself in a less dangerous way than if he had gone in headfirst, the force of the collision was still too much for his body to withstand. 

“I hit the boards hard, and I just knew instantly something was wrong,” Eberle said.

As Murphy got up and skated away, Eberle remained down on all fours while conversing with athletic trainer Justin Rogers. The silence in Climate Pledge Arena was deafening, as the home crowd held its collective breath, waiting to see if the veteran forward would get back up.

He eventually made it to his feet and coasted slowly to the bench, doubled over in pain. When he got off the ice and attempted to step toward the tunnel, his legs didn’t respond as expected.

“I got up and skated to the bench, and as soon as I took a step, I was like, ‘Oh, I can’t walk.’ And then the athletic trainers had to help me.”

Uh oh. Jordan Eberle with a VERY hard slam into the end wall.

He ended up getting helped down the tunnel. That didn’t look good. #SeaKraken pic.twitter.com/E1rvVGLe8j

— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) November 15, 2024

No immediate answers

Rogers and assistant athletic trainer Phil Varney helped Eberle down the tunnel and into the athletic training room, where he was examined. Fearing the 34-year-old had broken his hips, it was determined Eberle should go to the hospital in an ambulance. There, Eberle underwent a CT scan, but to his surprise, the scan didn’t reveal anything out of place. He still couldn’t lift his legs, though, so he was quickly referred to a local trauma surgeon by the Kraken medical staff.

“I went and saw a hip specialist, and he looked at it and immediately was like, ‘Yeah, this is what you’ve done. You’ve separated your pubic symphysis joint.’”

The pubic symphysis joint is where the right and left portions of the pubis connect in the middle. By stretching this, the two sides of Eberle’s pelvis had increased laxity (or looseness), leaving his lower body without structural integrity. It was a serious injury requiring a rare surgery to repair.

An unprecedented injury in hockey

The hip specialist explained that to repair the pubic symphysis joint, a plate would need to be screwed onto the bones to reconnect the two sides of the pelvis. While this gave Eberle a clear diagnosis, the injury was virtually unheard of in hockey, and a lack of shared knowledge in the sport about how to recover from the procedure made him apprehensive.

“Before I got the surgery, I reached out, tried to find a hockey player who had done this, and there was nobody,” Eberle recalled. “I tried to find a football player too, and there was nobody.”

Seattle’s medical staff had to think outside the box, searching for athletes in other sports who had experienced a similar injury to gain insight into the recovery process.

“Our doctor here found some rugby players who had done it. He spoke to two of them who had done it, and they were good, and he spoke to a third who didn’t do it and tried to recover naturally, and he ended up needing the surgery later on.”

That was all the information Eberle needed to move forward with the procedure. On Nov. 22, the Kraken announced that he had undergone pelvic surgery and would be out for three months.

Bad timing

There’s never a good time for a major injury, but this was especially bad timing. Eberle’s wife, Lauren, was nine months pregnant and due to deliver the couple’s third child at any moment. (In fact, just days before the fateful crash into the boards, Sound Of Hockey had spoken with Eberle about the challenges of becoming a dad in the middle of an NHL season.)

Indeed, baby girl Landyn was born two days after the surgery—while Eberle was completely immobilized.

“None of the praise should go to me,” Eberle said. “I was just lying in a hospital bed. My wife basically did it all, so she had three kids, and basically, I was the fourth kid lying there too.”

Thankfully, Jordan’s mom was able to come to Seattle and help Lauren, as were Lauren’s parents for various stretches.

“When you’re immobile for a month, and you’re just in a bed, you can’t do as much as you want. But I think [Lauren] was a big rock and a big reason why I’ve gotten to this point.”

A long road to recovery

In addition to the support system Eberle had at home, he also praised how the Kraken organization handled his recovery, allowing him to focus entirely on getting back to full strength at the right pace.

“I kind of had an idea in my head [for when I wanted to get back], but, once again, there wasn’t really any basis behind it, as far as anyone doing it. So just the mental roller coaster was— I think I had a great support system here, and with the team, they were just like, ‘Make sure you take care of it, and when you get back, you get back.’

“There wasn’t any pressure to come back early or late. There was no information on any of it, so it was as simple as trying to get better each day. And when days weren’t good, you tried to stay positive. When days were good, you just tried to keel it back a little bit… It was a wild experience.”

That patience from the organization was needed, because Eberle’s progression back from the injury was a long, arduous road. He spent a month in a hospital bed, then progressed to a wheelchair, then to crutches, and eventually to walking and skating.

Eberle admitted that the uncertainty of the situation was always on his mind during the recovery.

“I’d be lying if… yeah, of course,” Eberle said when asked if he had considered whether he may not be able to play again. “I think any time you get the news of what happened and [have them] basically telling you what the surgery entails, and no one’s ever done this, I mean, it crosses your mind. But I think once you start progressing each day, and you start moving… I think I tried not to let that get to me as much as it was in my head. 

“[And then it was] not so much about not ever playing, it was more so about not being the same player with what they had to do. But once I got on the ice, and made progress each day, and I saw myself getting better, and I saw each step that I was taking of basically learning to skate with a plate where something shouldn’t be, then I got better and better and better.” 

While there was no pressure to hit a specific return date, the Kraken’s estimated three-month recovery timeline turned out to be almost exactly right. Eberle was back in game action on Feb. 22 against the Florida Panthers. Since then, he has skated in five games, logging as much as 17:06 of ice time and registering an assist in each of Seattle’s last two games against Vancouver on Saturday and Minnesota on Tuesday.

More work left to do

Knowing what Eberle endured makes his return all the more impressive. Seattle coach Dan Bylsma shares that admiration for his perseverance.

“What’s remarkable about his recovery is just the work and the determination Ebs put in off the ice to [get back] in a relatively unknown situation,” Bylsma said. “There’s not a prescribed rehab for an athlete, for the surgery or the injury that he had, and so it was a little bit of an unknown. And the way he plowed through it, the way he worked through it, is quite remarkable.”

And while Eberle is back competing in the NHL, he knows he still has plenty of work to do to return to the level he was playing at before the injury—when he looked to be on pace for a career season.

“I’m happy I’m at the point now where I’m not thinking about it on the ice, I’m just playing, you know? There’s probably a little bit of tightness there, but that’s just going to happen for the rest of the year, probably. And I’m hoping once I get back to a good summer of training and get my speed and my quickness back, I can get right back to where I was.”