Logan Couture Overcame Serious Midseason Injury to Lead Playoffs in Points

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Logan Couture has 29 points in the NHL playoffs so far—six more than his nearest competitors, teammates Joe Pavelski and Brent Burns. Yet the ink spilled on Couture in these playoffs has been spilled by the thimble, not by the barrel.

As a media mob descended on San Jose Sharks captain Pavelski after practice Saturday in preparation for Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final against the Pittsburgh Penguins on Sunday night at SAP Center, only a handful of reporters gathered around Couture when he made himself available. He had just emerged from the trainer's room with some kind of gel on his nose to treat a cut suffered in Game 5 on Thursday in Pittsburgh.

Wearing a weathered Sharks baseball cap, Couture couldn't help but sneak a glance every few moments at the Toronto Blue Jays game on a TV screen in the other corner of the dressing room. Other than hockey and playing for the Sharks, Couture's other abiding sports passion is the Blue Jays.

A resident of London, Ontario, Couture said he is in the final stages of building a "man cabana," a covered outdoor oasis in which he can watch the Blue Jays on a big-screen TV when the Final is over. He hopes the earliest he'll be able to do that is next weekend. He wants nothing more than to play Game 7 on Wednesday night in Pittsburgh, and if it takes the rest of the world until then to realize what a monster playoffs he's had, he'll have no problem with that.

"I don't play to see my name in the headlines," Couture said. "That's fine if it happens, but I just play for the guys in this room and the logo on my chest."

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It's funny, though: Couture does not come across as the modest type. He does interviews like he's done them all his life. He holds court in a way. He seems to anticipate each question before it's finished, ready with his answer before the questioner is done. His eyes are not wide from all the attention. He seems used to it.

So why doesn't he command more of the public spotlight?

"Good question," Sharks teammate Paul Martin said from across the room. "He doesn't seem to get a lot of accolades in the media, but we appreciate him in here—I know that."

Couture is having quite a playoff run for a guy who thought he might die early in the regular season.

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It was Dec. 9, and the Sharks were playing the Edmonton Oilers. Couture was hit in the right thigh by Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurse. Couture knew he was hurt, but he thought it was nothing worse than a charley horse, per Ryan Pyette of the London Free Press. It turned out to be a ruptured blood vessel, and there was internal bleeding in his leg. It was the kind of wound that, if not treated quickly, could have killed him.

"On the flight home, I was wearing suit pants, and my leg kept getting bigger and bigger," Couture said in May, per Pyette. "It felt like it was going to blow out the sewing of my pants.

"I went to the hospital, did all the tests and it was [bleeding in my thigh]. Thankfully, they caught it right away. If they waited a couple more hours, it was really close to my artery and could've been bad.

"I was close to losing my leg."

Looking back, Couture said it was beyond frightening.

"I could have died," he said Saturday. "I was scared. It was the scariest thing I've been through in my life, actually."

While the injury was terrible, it might have been a blessing for Sharks head coach Peter DeBoer, who was forced to perform multiple experiments with younger replacement hopefuls while Couture convalesced. Couture had already missed nearly two months previously with an ankle injury when the thigh injury occurred.

"It was a catastrophic injury; it really was," DeBoer said. "There was talk at some points there he might miss up to six months. We tried a lot of young guys in different spots. [Tomas] Hertl played some center. We brought guys in. [Chris] Tierney had a chance to play. It was a quick learn for me on the depth of the organization. [I] got to know the young guys [and] know what they could [and] couldn't do."

Tierney emerged as a strong third-line center, and Couture came back better than ever after the thigh injury. The Sharks might have wound up a better team because of it. But Couture doesn't want to go through anything like that again.

"My friends and my family helped get me through that," he said. "It was to the point where you don't know if you're going to lose your leg or you're going to die."

Chosen ninth overall in the 2007 NHL draft by the Sharks, Couture has scored 154 goals and recorded 324 points in 431 career games. A 6'1", 200-pound center, the 27-year-old Guelph, Ontario, native has great speed—even though he's never taken any skating lessons.

"Never," he said. "No power-skating lessons. Nothing. My parents just told me to go out and play the game for fun."

He has, as they say in the business, "good edges"—i.e., strong, cutting strides and the ability to turn on a dime.

Around the Sharks dressing room, Couture is known as "Cooch." Teammate Joel Ward said he is one of the most competitive people he's ever known.

"Nobody at our level likes to lose," Ward said. "But Cooch really doesn't like to lose. He's no fun if he loses at anything."

Couture notched three points in San Jose's 4-2 victory over the Penguins in Game 5, but the Sharks are in a 3-2 hole. If he leads the playoffs in scoring but the Sharks don't win the Stanley Cup, he's not going to remember it well.

"You have to achieve a certain amount of personal success to get to this level," Couture said. "But once you're here, you play to win. It's a personal thing right now [to be the leading playoff scorer], but what matters is how the team does. We don't like being down 3-2. But we're happy being back at home with a chance to even the series."

Earlier in this series, Couture made headlines for saying Pittsburgh's Sidney Crosby "cheats" on faceoffs. Crosby has been kicked out of the circle a few times since then, which Couture said he's made note of.

He also said the Penguins star "is no fun to play against," except in his own personal way.

"It's so hard to play against him, but I take it as a challenge," Couture said. "I've always taken pride in the defensive side of the game. He's as tough as they come, but I enjoy the challenge."

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If the Sharks find a way to win the Stanley Cup, Couture will be a leading candidate to claim the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoffs' most valuable player. If the Sharks fall short, there's an outside shot he could become the first losing player to win the trophy since Jean-Sebastien Giguere did it for the then-Mighty Ducks of Anaheim in 2003.

No matter what happens, Couture is thankful to be here.

"When something like that happens to you, like my leg injury, it makes you appreciate what you have," he said. "I've really enjoyed this whole experience. Best part of the year. The best sport to watch. The best sport to be a part of. You appreciate how tough it is to win on a nightly basis. You get to the bench, take a drink of water and you're right back out. You don't really have a second to breathe.

"But this summer, I'm sure I'll have plenty of chances to sit back and reflect on what this was like."

Adrian Dater covers the NHL for Bleacher Report.