Corey Cowick stands in the empty Urbandale Centre as his teammates prepare for warm-up.
When Corey Cowick stepped onto the ice for his first 2009 Ontario Hockey League pre-season game with the Ottawa 67’s on Aug. 30 in Kingston, he was hoping it would be his last before heading to the Ottawa Senators rookie camp.
As it turned out, it was. But for all the wrong reasons.
Cowick was hit awkwardly by an opponent in the back of his shoulder after passing the puck to a teammate and suffered a torn labrum in his right shoulder, crushing his hopes of cracking the roster of the Senators’ American Hockey League affiliate in Binghamton.
“Right when I fell I knew something was wrong,” Cowick says. “I tried to pull it back into place but I couldn’t move it at all.”
Three days after the hit, Cowick had surgery to repair his injuries.
“When [Cowick] dislocated his shoulder, he tore and stretched out all those ligaments and tendons,” says team trainer Neil Hoch.
“What they do is slice the labrum and the ligaments, they shorten it and sew it back into the bone and let it heal.”
Cowick says doctors told him that the typical recovery time is four-and-a-half to six months.
While he is aware of the risks of coming back too soon, Cowick says he’d like to be back in action before that.
“I want to prove [the doctors] wrong,” he says. “But sometimes that’s not always the best thing, as I’m learning now. You have to give it time to heal.”
That’s exactly the kind of attitude the 67’s want Cowick to take. With the team struggling, the last thing they need is for complications to thwart the comeback of one of Ottawa’s star players.
“When he’s in the lineup he makes everyone better,” says general manager Brian Kilrea. “I know he would have scored around 35 goals this season.”
Cowick is in his tenth week of rehabilitation and says it is coming along smoothly.
He was restricted to carrying his shoulder in a sling for the first four weeks but has now begun skating alone before practices.
“I’m at the gym everyday trying to keep my cardio up while my body can’t do anything else,” he says.
“I’m trying to keep in game form while rehabbing.”
Hoch says he doesn’t expect Cowick to be very far behind when he is able to play again.
“There are players who might go out and play scared,” he says. “I think Corey is the type of kid who will be biting at the bit to catch up to everyone.”
Cowick, who has set a very tentative timeline of mid-February for his return, is currently enrolled in two classes at Carleton University: one a second-year forensic psychology class; the other a first-year financial accounting course.
He says his schoolwork has helped him keep his mind off the injury.
Last season, after being acquired from the Oshawa Generals, Cowick, a Gloucester native, made a dramatic homecoming by scoring 34 goals for the team he grew up watching.
While this season isn’t shaping up the way Cowick imagined, he knows that being traded to the 67’s was a watershed moment in his life.
“It was huge for me,” Cowick says.
“It kind of set the tone for me for the rest of my hockey career, and my life.”
As for his injury, Cowick is confident that he will be able to excel once he is able to get back in the lineup, drawing inspiration from NHL players who he has seen recover from similar procedures.
“There’s definitely a lot of shoulder injuries in hockey,” he says.
“A lot of guys are playing regular shifts and excelling even after the surgery.”