BUFFALO – As he sat at his locker and fielded questions about the hernia problem that has dogged him more than a year, Sabres winger Jordan Greenway let out an “oof” in response to a query about the last time he felt normal on the ice.
“A long time, I’ll just say that, a long time,” he after participating in Thursday’s optional pregame skate inside KeyBank Center. “Prior to both surgeries, I can tell you that.”
Greenway, 28, underwent his first hernia surgery in December 2024 and a second one last offseason.
Neither one could fix the problem.
The Canton native has tried to gut out the pain – the Sabres have him on a load-management plan – but his body keeps telling him to stop.
“It’s been screaming at me for some time as of late,” he said. “So that’s kind of why we’ve made the decision to look for more information, more knowledge, more opinions.”
So for the time being at least, he will keep sitting out games. Thursday’s contest against the Los Angeles Kings will be the third straight he has missed.
Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said Greenway plans to visit the doctor Monday.
“But he can still skate,” he said. “We’re just going to see if we can get him in a better place and maybe get a more definitive answer.”
Naturally, battling an injury for so long and experiencing so much pain has forced the 6-foot-6, 231-pound Greenway to think about more than his career.
“I still got a life to live afterwards, and ideally I can use all of my limbs and my core afterwards, right?” he said. “So you definitely have to think about it, for sure.
“But at the end of the day, my goal is to be able to go out there, help the team as much as I can and do it with the least amount of pain as possible.”
Greenway said the load-management plan the Sabres began in late November has helped decrease the pain and allow his body the proper time it needs to recover.
He underwent two surgeries in short span, couldn’t enjoy a regular summer of training and missed all of training camp.
“It can be hard to get the body to come back and do what you expect it to do,” he said.
So over the last two months, he hasn’t played on back-to-back days and often sits out practice to rest or do off-ice work.
“We’ve been doing lot of things to try to decrease the pain as much as possible and to allow me to go out there and play comfortably,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve gotten the results that we’ve wanted fully, so we’re going to look to get more improvements.”
Greenway has played just 33 of the Sabres’ 53 games this year and 67 of their last 135 dating back to the start of last season.
“I’m big believer in control what you can control, and I feel as the medical team, the coaches, management, everyone has been trying to help every way that they can with the things that we can control,” he said. “And I can’t do anything to speed the recovering up. I can’t do anything to make this feel better. …
“But bottom line, going out there, playing in pain is never fun.”