Canadiens athletic therapist Rynbend reaches milestone

"It’s seldom the happy stories that define the career of an athletic therapist, whose most obvious work is done when disaster strikes.

So it is that four catastrophic injuries are the benchmarks for Graham Rynbend, who on Tuesday night at the Bell Centre worked his 1,000th NHL game – all for the Canadiens.

Chronologically: 

• Nov. 20, 1999: Brian Savage is crushed by the Kings’ Ian Laperrière, the open-ice check in Los Angeles fracturing three vertebrae in the forward’s spine. 

• Jan. 29, 2000: Trent McCleary takes a slapshot in the throat during a Bell Centre game, which fractures his larynx and collapses a lung. 

• April 26, 2002: Richard Zednik is destroyed on Montreal ice by an elbow from the Bruins’ Kyle McLaren, resulting in a fractured cheekbone, broken nose and concussion. 

• March 8, 2011: Max Pacioretty is knocked out, severely concussed and suffers a fractured vertebra when slammed into a Bell Centre stanchion by the Bruins’ Zdeno Chara."
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"So Dave Campbell, currently the Canadiens’ osteopathy consultant under whom Rynbend had done clinic work, got him in with Lefebvre for the Habs’ 1994 training camp."
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"But he’s quick to laud his medical team – assistant Nick Addey-Jibb, his supervisor from a long-ago clinic internship who last week marked his 1,500th game in minor-pro and NHL hockey; osteopath Campbell; physiotherapy consultant Donald Balmforth; and game-night therapist Jon Geller, a newcomer to the staff."

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