Flyers Mike Richards to have Surgery

And one of the more surprising announcements of the offseason is that Mike Richards has been playing with a torn labrum in his right shoulder and will have surgery Friday. The Flyers also announced that Richards will need surgery on his left shoulder, too. Richards said he will have that procedure after the first surgery and once he regains some strength in his right shoulder.

“Once I get my motion back and get a little bit of strength back I will have the left one done so I will just be able to do some things,” Richards said.

According to general manager Paul Holmgren, Richards suffered the injury early in the season, underwent cortisone treatments to manage the pain and continued to play. He will need 8 to 12 weeks of rehab, Holmgren said.

“It’s been going on for a while,” Holmgren said this morning. “We managed it during the course of the year but we knew at some point he was probably going to have surgery.

“It’s been since early in the season, really. It was one of those things where he wasn’t going to make it any worse by playing. He had some cortisone injections over the course of the season to help him manage a little better.”

Richards said: “I am not exactly sure when it happened to my left shoulder. One day it was a little bit sore and it just kept on getting more sore. I kind of checked it out early in the year. My right shoulder was kind of a similar situation. It really wasn’t a certain game that I noticed it. I noticed both very early in the season just after training camp.”

Richards was asked how much pain he was in during the season and playoffs.

“Not a lot,” he said. “There were certain days that were a lot worse than other days. But it wasn’t like I was in agony or throbbing pain. It was more of like achy and sore. Like if you slept on it bad, you would wake up sore. But it wasn’t like it was really bad pain where I couldn’t bear it or anything.”