The St. Louis Blues expect to start next season without star winger Vladimir Tarasenko, who needs additional surgery on his injured left shoulder.
"He's going to go back in and have more surgery next week. It's serious in the sense that he won't be with us, and [will] be re-evaluated after five months after the day of the surgery," Blues GM Doug Armstrong said in a conference call on Wednesday.
Tarasenko had that shoulder surgically repaired in October 2019, missing 61 regular-season games for the Blues. He returned when the NHL opened training camps in July and appeared in four postseason games, going scoreless with a minus-1 and just 10 shots on goal. After two ineffective games against the Vancouver Canucks in the conference quarterfinals, Tarasenko was listed as "unfit to play" for Games 3 and 4 before leaving the Edmonton bubble on Aug. 18 and returning to St. Louis for further medical evaluation.
Coach Craig Berube said at the time that the situation was "concerning," adding that "he obviously wasn't comfortable with the way it felt, so we gotta get it looked at."
Armstrong said this will be the third surgery on Tarasenko's injured shoulder, and shared his concern.
"It's certainly not a positive that we're going through right now. It's his third surgery. We just know that he prepares and trains hard and he needs to get back and play well for us. But yeah, it's a concern in the sense that he's going to have three surgeries," he said.
Tarasenko has been one of the NHL's leading scorers during his nine-year career, with 214 goals in 507 games. He had 11 goals and six assists in 26 games during the Blues' Stanley Cup championship run last season.
The Blues were eliminated by the Canucks in the conference quarterfinal in six games.