Flames centre Sean Monahan to have season-ending surgery

Sean Monahan is done for the season.

Calgary Flames general manager Brad Treliving delivered the news before this morning’s pre-game skate the centre will have hip surgery, ending the 27-year-old’s 2021-22 NHL campaign.

The Flames host the St. Louis Blues tonight (8 p.m., HNIC, Sportsnet 960).

Treliving said the team found out about the injury in the last couple of days and expects Monahan, who is being placed on long-term injured reserve, will be ready for training camp in September.

“Sean is one that plays through a lot of stuff without telling a lot of people … I know Sean’s faced a lot of criticism,” Treliving said. “I think there’s a lot of bull—- out there, to be perfectly honest. This guy plays through a lot of things, and for people to challenge or to question him I think is wrong. Most people out there couldn’t play through a third of what he has, and he keeps it to himself.

“This isn’t stuff where people have forced him out onto the ice, so I don’t know how long it’s been bothering him. He’s gotten treatment like everybody gets treatment. In the last couple of days, he said ‘I’ve got a problem here.”

Hip surgery is not new to Monahan. The Flames shut him down with four games left in last year’s pandemic-truncated season, and he had surgery on his other hip last summer. He admitted at camp last September that his hurting hip bothered him through most of 2020-21, when he scored 10 goals and 18 assists in 50 games.

Kylington day-to-day

Treliving also said sidelined Flames defenceman Oliver Kylington is day-to-day after leaving Thursday’s shootout loss to the Los Angeles Kings with an upper-body injury. Kylington crashed into the boards in the third period of the home game and did not return. Defenceman Connor Mackey has been recalled from AHL Stockton as a result.