Hakanpaa's hopes to play this season fading: 'Wasn't meant to be this year'
Published
Veteran defenceman Jani Hakanpaa, who has only played two games in his first season with the Toronto Maple Leafs, has started to face the reality that he may not be able to play meaningful minutes for his new team this year.
The 32-year-old, who stands an imposing 6-foot-7, has struggled with a knee injury that existed before he joined the Maple Leafs but has, according to Hakanpaa, gone from manageable to "pretty bad" in the last year.
“I really thought I could come in, give it a little time to get up to speed, and then start playing,” Hakanpää said in an interview published Thursday with The Athletic.
“I knew [I] would have to manage it throughout the year. But obviously in my head, by now I would’ve been playing for many, many games already."
Hakanpaa suited up for two games in November, with his last contest coming on Nov. 16 against the Edmonton Oilers. He had minor surgery on his knee with the hope of returning to action in the second half of the season in November and was placed on LTIR on Dec. 2.
Since then, he has been logging inconsistent time on the ice and with the team in an effort to try to figure out how best to manage the injury.
Hakanpaa returned to practice on Jan. 11 for the first time with the team, and was named to Finland's 4 Nations Face-Off roster, but still has not logged enough consistent reps in practice to ever approach returning to the lineup.
"It just wasn’t meant to be this year," Hakanpaa said. "But there’s still a lot of time and we’re all hopeful of still having a lot of hockey games left.”
Hakanpaa was a consistent presence in the lineup for the Dallas Stars, Carolina Hurricanes and Anaheim Ducks before joining the Maple Leafs, appearing in 283 of a possible 302 games from 2020-24. He scored 14 goals and registered 44 points in that span.
The knee issues started to flare up in March of last season, according to Hakanpaa.
“It was feeling really good almost the whole year and then it just flared up pretty bad,” he said. “I think we all kinda got blindsided by it a little bit. Because I felt we were doing a really good job of managing it. I was feeling pretty good. And then, just within a few weeks, it kinda went downhill pretty quick. And then we figured we’d just give it a little time and then work our way back and then it just didn’t happen as fast as we thought it would. We tried to find different ways to get back.”
The issue carried over into the summer. The Maple Leafs had reportedly signed Hakanpaa to a two-year deal in July, but ultimately made it official with a one-year deal just before training camp opened with the hope that he could get healthy.
“We’re obviously to a point where he and us feel confident,” Leafs GM Brad Treliving said of the signing in mid-September. “And we’ll see how it goes.”
The native of Kirkkonummi, Finland has dug into the routine of rehabilitating an injury that seemingly isn't progressing. "I feel like I warm up more than I actually stay on the ice nowadays. But it’s part of the deal. Whatever we need to do, we’re doing.”
Hakanpaa's extended absence, combined with the recent injury to Chris Tanev, has left the Maple Leafs bereft of right-shot defencemen in the lineup. The team sits second in the Atlantic Division at 36-20-2, one point behind the Florida Panthers with two games in hand.