Danny Cleary awaits surgery, expects to be healthy for training camp

If he had to do it again, forward Danny Cleary wouldn’t have put it off.
Knowing what he knows now, and experiencing what a struggle it was, Cleary would have had the knee surgery earlier this season that he is planning to have the first week of May.
“It’s hard to play with one leg,” Cleary said.
Which is exactly what Cleary did for the vast part of this season.
Cleary hurt the knee in November and was hopeful it would get better and it would “calm down”, as Cleary said, but it never did.
It got worse. And Cleary finished with a meager 12 goals in 75 games, none in five playoff games.
“I tried as hard as I could and gave it all I can,” Cleary said. “What are you going to do?”
Torn cartilage, torn ligaments, bone-on-bone, a huge fluid build up, it all needs to be repaired in the knee.
“I couldn’t walk without a limp since November,” Cleary said. “The games were real hard.”
The knee, incidentally, was after Cleary suffered broken ribs late in the exhibition season.
And the way Cleary plays, in front of the net, tough along the boards, the ribs were a significant injury as well.
Just par for the course, though.
“An injury filled season,” Cleary said.
Cleary expects to be 100 percent for the start of training camp in September after about six weeks of rehabilitation following the surgery.
A healthy Cleary would go a long way toward improving the Wings’ depth.
“We need a healthy Danny Cleary,” coach Mike Babcock said.