AZ alone: Conor Garlands personal loss, concern for girlfriend, on-ice regrets -

Conor Garland doesn’t need more challenges than the month of March offered.

In the past four weeks, he suffered a knee injury that he initially feared might end his season, he lost a good friend, he has worried endlessly for a loved one on the front lines of the COVID-19 battle, and he has endured it all alone, sequestered in his Scottsdale home.

“The days are getting long,” the Coyotes forward said.

Garland’s ordeal began on March 6 in Calgary when he clipped Flames goaltender Cam Talbot while chasing down a loose puck late in a 3-2 loss at Scotiabank Saddledome.

“He came out of the net, the puck bounced over his stick and I jumped at it, tried to slide, and when he came out he got me right at the end of my hockey pants and I just flipped over him and I don’t think my knee fully turned,” Garland said. “I knew right away that something was wrong. Their defenseman cross-checked me in the back because he was thinking I hit their goalie and he has to do that. I just said, ‘Hey, I fucked my knee up. You’ve got to leave me alone.’ He was like ‘OK, I gotcha,’ and I said, ‘Thank you.’”

Garland got himself to the bench and when coach Rick Tocchet asked if he could go back on the ice for 6-on-5 play as the Coyotes tried to tie the game, he initially said, “Yes.”

“When we called timeout, I jumped out on the ice, tried to do a turn and then I was like, ‘I can’t,’” he said. “I would never turn down a chance to go out there but I said, ‘I don’t think I’m going to help.’”

Garland suffered a Grade 2 MCL sprain in his left knee and flew back to Arizona the following day — four days before his 24th birthday — while the Coyotes prepared to complete a three-game road trip in Winnipeg. While some reports suggested Garland could be out for the rest of the regular season, Garland knew after two weeks that would not be the case.

“We did such a good job with it at the beginning that after two weeks when I got checked out, I was almost back to normal already,” he said. “Had the season continued, I probably would have surprised people with how fast I came back. I could play right now.”

Instead, Garland is in a holding pattern like much of the world, trapped in his home by the COVID-19 outbreak.

“I’m just trying to stay safe,” he said. “All the unknown is scary.”

It’s particularly scary for Garland, whose girlfriend, Meghan, is a nurse at a children’s hospital in the Boston area.

“I spend a lot of my day worrying about that and talking to her,” Garland said. “She’s the best and I admire her so much, but the work is getting more and more intense and more and more dangerous because they are laying more and more people off so there is more and more to do.”

Garland would rather have Meghan in Scottsdale with him, but he understands the sacrifice she is making. That doesn’t ease his concern, his loneliness or the pain he is feeling over a recent loss. A week ago, his parents had to put the family dog down. Max was a 15-year-old yellow lab who lived with Garland the past few summers and would have come to Arizona if he had a roommate to take care of him while he traveled with the team.

“I was able to see him when we got to Boston (for a Feb. 8 game against the Bruins), but it was his time,” Garland said.

Photo courtesy of Conor Garland.

Aside from talking to Meghan, Garland calls his parents every day back in Scituate, Mass. He bought a bunch of gift cards for friends and family to help support his buddy’s barbershop until everyone can get their hair cut again. He works out, he shoots pucks into his fireplace, he plays video games online with old friend Ryan Donato, a forward for the Minnesota Wild, and he chats with his teammates such as Clayton Keller.

“Kells every day, (Jakob) Chych(run) most days and sometimes Phil (Kessel) when he gets bored,” Garland said, laughing. “He and I are the only two out here without a wife, a girlfriend or a roommate to keep us company so those first couple weeks it was like, ‘Hey, what are you doin’?’ And he’d go, ‘Nothin’, you?’ And I’d go, ‘Nothin.’”

Like his teammates, Garland hopes the NHL season will resume and give the Coyotes a chance to climb back into a playoff spot. He can’t stop thinking about all those close losses they suffered, particularly a three-game stretch against Anaheim, Los Angeles and Chicago in late January-early February, when Arizona earned two of a possible six points against Western Conference bottom feeders.

“We played well but we just couldn’t get a win against those teams that aren’t high in the standings and then all of the sudden you’ve got this tough stretch against a bunch of good teams where you know you put yourself in a bad spot,” he said. “So many one-goal losses. That’s so frustrating for a player like myself or all the guys who pride themselves on their offense and want to score. I can go back to so many games and think, ‘How did I miss that chance?’

“It’s such a shit feeling when you’re on the ice 6-on-5 and then the clock runs out on another loss. It’s like a dagger and it just kept happening.”

It’s no surprise that if play were to resume without regular-season games, Garland would be in favor of an expanded playoff format where 24 teams make it and the lower teams fight it out in play-in series for the right to join the regular field.

“You want to play, and there’s so many teams fighting for spots that it would be so hard to tell the teams that are close, ‘Sorry,’” he said. “You’re right there and nobody can predict how the season was going to end.”

All of those plans are on indefinite hold, however, as the COVID-19 cases and deaths continue to climb in the United States.

“I listen to the press conference every day with the president and the two doctors and it’s hard to believe we’re going to be able to play any time soon without some hard-core restrictions,” he said. “I’m sure the league is thinking about all of that, but it sounds like it’s going on longer than anyone thinks.

“This is way more important than hockey.”

(Photo of Conor Garland during the Coyotes-Flames game March 6, 2020: Sergei Belski / USA Today Sports)

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