Utah Mammoth 2025 first-round pick Caleb Desnoyers has undergone successful wrist surgery, per the team, and is expected to miss approximately 12 weeks.
Desnoyers, who was selected fourth overall, played the majority of last season with two injured wrists — which is remarkable considering everything he accomplished as one of the younger players in the QMJHL.
“Pretty much anything that you can imagine that you need your hands for (in) hockey was affected by it,” he said in an interview at the NHL Combine. “Lucky enough, I have good staff and good facilities and my therapist is excellent — top of the top in the Q."
It’s unclear whether he underwent the surgery on both wrists or just one.
Ahead of the draft, Mammoth GM Bill Armstrong said in an interview that Utah’s medical staff had already evaluated Desnoyers.
“It’s always important to make sure that you go through thorough evaluation, when a player’s hurt, to make sure you know what you’re getting,” Armstrong said. “We’re not taking anybody in the draft that we haven’t gone through their medical 150%, and if they’ve had something in there that we weren’t happy about, we follow it up with another medical (evaluation), usually in Utah or in their hometown through the MRIs and doctors that we know.”
“With Mr. Desnoyers, I believe we’ve done our process and we’ll let you know how that one works out.”
Desnoyers won both the QMJHL championship and the playoff MVP award last season. He tallied 84 points in 56 regular-season games and added 30 more in 19 playoff contests. He’s hailed as an elite two-way center and he compares himself to three-time Stanley Cup champion Jonathan Toews.
A history of first-round injuries
This isn’t the first time this management group has drafted a player with major injuries on both sides of his body. In fact, it’s not even the second time.
Tij Iginla, the sixth-overall pick in 2024, missed the majority of last season after getting double hip surgery for femoroacetabular impingement.
He’s expected to make a full recovery, but missing that much hockey during such a crucial time in his development can’t be good for him as a hockey player.
Similarly, 2022 29th-overall pick Maveric Lamoureux went under the knife to repair both of his shoulders before ever seeing NHL ice. He made his NHL debut last season, but suffered an unrelated injury 15 games into the season and was reassigned to the AHL when he returned.