from Michael Farber of Sports Illustrated,

The first law of the NHL playoffs: Do not discuss your injuries. This dictum is for self-preservation, limiting but not eliminating the possibility of adding injury to injury. (Only martial law takes more liberties than hockey players.) Teams once hid behind the flimsy veil of the diagonal rule, which posited that if a banged-up player grudgingly acknowledged he might have a bum right ankle, he most likely had a separated left shoulder. When video ruined that ruse, the NHL defaulted to the murky world of the “upper-body injury” and the “lower-body injury” linguistic acrobatics that have been credited to the late Pat Quinn, the Hall of Fame coach who, not surprisingly, trained as a lawyer.

Then Erik Karlsson took out a Sharpie and drew a map.

The Senators’ defenseman can do practically anything he wants on the ice, and apparently off. Flouting convention and baffling teammates, he specified last week that the lower-body problem that had bedeviled him for a month was two hairline fractures in his left heel. Until that moment the only heel being heavily scrutinized in the Stanley Cup playoffs was professional irritant Ryan Kesler, the Ducks’ center who currently is tormenting Edmonton star Connor McDavid. “I’m not much for secrets,” Karlsson said before Ottawa’s second-round series against the Rangers. No kidding. He might as well have tweeted his ATM PIN.

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