Maple Leafs' Jani Hakanpaa breaks silence about possible career ending knee injury

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Chris Gerics
September 16, 2024 (6:45 PM)

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The Toronto Maple Leafs decision to go ahead and signed Jani Hakanpaa given his history with a lingering knee injury, it left many surprised and wondering how long Hakanpaa will last.

Speaking to the media on Monday, ahead of Toronto's annual golf tournament before the kick-off of the season, Hakanpaa tried his best to quell concerns about the Leafs signing amidst his knee injury. With regards to his lingering knee injury, Hakanpaa stated:

"There's good days, bad days, but I think that underlying trust that it's going to happen eventually always been there.

"I think it's more of just finding ways to do stuff off the ice to support it the best we can and just cut out a bunch of stuff that's not really good for it and just kind of, it's more learning what's good and what's bad for it and sticking with the good stuff."

Hakanpaa will get a chance to figure out how long it will be until he can take the ice with his teammates; needing to reconvene with Toronto's training staff first for their opinion regardless of how he feels. But for now, it sounds like Hakanpaa is raring to go and get the season underway:

"You're itching. You're itching at this time. We put a lot of work into all of that so we're getting close but now just put the finishing touches on it and get back out there," Hakanpaa said while speaking at the Leafs' annual golf tournament.

He wasn't playing in the golf tournament, most likely due to his knee, however Hakanpaa will tell you a different story:

"My golf bad is actually bad so that's the biggest thing, to be honest," he joked.

Well, his golf game may be rough but his defense with Dallas speaks for itself and Hakanpaa would finally bring an elite shutdown defender that Toronto has sought out for the past several years. If he can even do half of what he did in Dallas, it would be a big improvement over some of the bodies Toronto has put on the ice before him.

Teammate Chris Tanev, who also signed with Toronto spoke highly of Hakanpaa, and is excited to have him on the team:

"Hak's amazing, huge, works really hard, super nice guy. I think he's a really good player. So I mean, obviously happy to have him here with me," Tanev said. "I mean, I was only played with him for maybe two weeks before he got hurt, but really good player, really good person. I obviously can't say enough about him."

He's betting on himself too, knowing his capabilities and what he can offer to the team once he gets back into the full swing of things:

«I bring a lot of good physicality and some good, solid defense play and some penalty killing specialties with me,» Hakanpaa said. «It's something I take a lot of pride in and it's for sure going to help the team as well.»