Penguins GM calls injury to NBA's Paul George 'every general manager’s worst nightmare'

Paul George of the NBA's Indiana Pacers recently suffered a serious leg injury at a USA Basketball intrasquad scrimmage, one that will likely force him to miss the 2014-15 season. Due to the fact the injury occurred in preparation for the FIBA Basketball World Cup, it caught the eye of others in professional sports leagues whose players participate in major international tournaments.

Pittsburgh Penguins general manager Jim Rutherford, for example, watched the replay of the incident, no doubt thinking of Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin suffering a similar fate at the Olympics. 

“We all take risks when our players play in international competition,” Rutherford told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “What happened to that Indiana player is one of the big ones. That’s every general manager’s worst nightmare.”

It's a scenario faced by the New York Islanders this past season when superstar John Tavares went down with a knee injury in Sochi and missed the remainder of the regular season.

While George will be paid according to the terms of his new five-year, $92 million contract, and teams carry insurance on player contracts in the case of similar circumstances, Rutherford added the loss of a star player can't be quantified: “It covers the money you have to pay to a player, but it doesn’t cover the loss of what that player can do for his team. Nobody can make up for that.”

The NHL's participation at the 2018 Winter Games is in Pyeongchang, South Korea, but Rutherford doesn't appear too keen on the idea of allowing the likes of Crosby and Malkin to make the trip.

I don’t know how I would vote right now. That’s a really good question. My personal opinion is that the Olympics should be an amateur event. I always looked at it as something that kicked off people’s careers. But that changed. I guess now I would be more inclined to vote to play if the Olympics were in a country where hockey is really important. 

No general manager is overly excited when he hears one of his players is picked to play.

For now, the players generally have a large appetite to play in these big international tournaments, and Rutherford admitted, “It’s hard to tell the players not to go." As a result, injuries such as the one suffered by George will remain a risk for the foreseeable future.