In the Vancouver Canucks’ opening press conference in Penticton, BC, general manager Patrik Allvin disclosed that four players wouldn’t be participating in training camp due to injury.

Three of the players’ injuries were made public before training camp: forward Dakota Joshua, who successfully underwent surgery to remove testicular cancer; Cole McWard, who missed the Young Stars Classic with a lower-body injury; and Thatcher Demko, who is still dealing with his knee issue from last season.

However, the most shocking news was that Teddy Blueger would miss training camp with an undisclosed lower-body injury. Prior to this point, there had been no word on a Blueger injury, but the belief was that he would only be out for a week.

While he did not participate in training camp, he did skate with the extra group on three of the four days. After Tuesday morning’s practice, Blueger met with the media to address his injury ahead of the Canucks’ first preseason game.

“Good, I feel great,” Blueger said about how he felt after his first practice with the team. “I thought my conditioning was really good. I didn’t really think I was out of shape or anything like that or way behind or gasping for air, so that’s always nice.”

Blueger has high hopes that he’ll be able to return before Vancouver’s opening regular season game.

“I was very confident when things were going on, we discussed the timeline. Very confident I had plenty of time to get back. There’s no guarantees but I played with a guy last year with the exact procedure done at the same time as I did and he was back in plenty of time to start the year.”

“That’s definitely the goal, maybe even a little before that,” Blueger expressed. “Like I said, there’s no guarantees; nothing’s for sure. There can be plenty of things that happen with setbacks. You don’t want to get too ahead of ourselves, and I think we’ve done a really good job with the staff here, taking it day by day, coming in every morning, re-evaluating, doing everything I can to recover and supplement things that I’m not able to do to make sure I’m in good shape and the rest of my game is where it needs to be.”

While the club believed Blueger would be out for just one week, Blueger seems to be taking a more day-by-day approach to this injury instead of projecting when/if he’ll see preseason action.

“Yeah, I mean, we’ll see,” Blueger replied when asked if he would appear in any preseason games. “There’s no hard timeline like that. We’re trying to not overdue the expectations and things like that. Like, honestly, I know it sounds annoying, probably for you guys [media members], and you hear it all the time, but day-by-day has been the thing.”

“Last week [I] skated with one of the groups out in Penticton and you know, it was a little tough at first. But kind of built into it, felt better. And I think today was a big step forward, getting through a full practice with everyone. It was a hard practice, good pace, a lot of one on one, a lot of battling. So getting through that, seeing how I feel, seeing how it reacts, come back tomorrow and reassess and as long as it keeps feeling good, then we take the next step. It’s kind of a process more like that rather than a circle date. I think slowing it down and breaking the process into smaller steps is how we’re approaching it.”

Throughout his six NHL seasons, Blueger has suffered his fair share of injuries. He discussed how his previous injuries are helping him through his current one as he enters year seven.

“Being through camps before and the preseason schedule, just different experiences in my career of being hurt. Even last year, getting hurt in preseason. That was tough. Being on a new team and then jumping in 15 games in, trying to kind of prove yourself on a new team. I think all these experiences, if anything, kind of calms the anxiety. I know stressing about it isn’t going to necessarily help me but just taking the process as it is, show up everyday, do everything you can and that’s about it.”

Blueger refrained himself from detailing what his injury was, the procedure he had, or discussing exactly when he would return to the Canucks lineup.

The centreman will have just over two weeks to heal up in time for the Canucks’ season opener against the Calgary Flames on October 9th.