Canucks Filip Chytil's Horrid Hockey Luck Strikes Again

Some hockey players seem to have all the luck. And then there are players who seem to have all the bad luck. Filip Chytil might qualify for that second group.

Chytil has had some of the worst hockey luck I can remember.

The Vancouver Canucks forward has already had more than his share of injury trouble during what should still be the prime of his NHL career. There have been concussions, facial injuries and other issues that have interrupted his career just when things appeared to be moving in the right direction. Now he has another one.

Chytil was playing against the Edmonton Oilers in a preseason game when he and referee Riley Brace collided as they headed into the corner. It was one of those strange hockey accidents that nobody could have planned for. Chytil went shoulder-first into the boards, and for a moment there was some understandable concern about what had happened.

The good news is that this doesn't appear to be another concussion.

Chytil is on the injured reserve yet again.

Canucks general manager Ryan Johnson described the injury as a shoulder muscle strain, and Chytil has been placed on injured reserve. He's considered week-to-week, so there’s no timetable yet for his return. That's obviously not ideal, particularly with the regular season approaching.

But there is another way of looking at it. If you're the Canucks, avoiding another head injury for Chytil is probably the most important part of this story. Considering his history, seeing him go hard into the boards after a collision with an official was enough to make everybody watching hold their breath. Instead, it appears the damage is to his shoulder.

That's still a problem. Vancouver didn't bring Chytil in to watch games from the press box. The Canucks need him to be healthy and contributing, and every missed week matters when a player is trying to establish himself in a new environment.

Canucks fans have to hope Chytil gets a little break soon.

Chytil's injury history isn't something the player can control. That's the frustrating part. You can train, prepare, play responsibly and still have something happen at exactly the wrong moment. That's hockey.

And that's the part of the game that sometimes gets forgotten when we talk about players being "injury-prone." Sometimes a player isn't doing anything particularly wrong. Sometimes he's simply been unlucky. Chytil has had plenty of that.

So here's hoping this latest setback is just a short detour. A shoulder strain is frustrating, but compared with what Chytil and the Canucks might have feared when he went into those boards, it could have been considerably worse.

Sometimes, for an unlucky player, that's about as much good news as you can ask for.