Report: Blue Jackets' Nathan Horton 'not close to getting on the ice'

Columbus Blue Jackets power forward Nathan Horton hasn't played this season as a result of a mysterious back ailment, and the worst is feared, with rumors he may never play NHL hockey again proving persistent.

Horton, one of the league's premiere net-front players when healthy, has been beset by a myriad of injuries in recent years and began this year on the shelf. On Tuesday, during an Insider Trading segment on TSN, Bob McKenzie shed light on the nature of Horton's injury, his lack of progress, and some of the options available to the Welland, Ont., native:

This is a player who is no closer today to getting on the ice and playing with  the Columbus Blue Jackets than he was at the beginning of training camp ...

It's believed that he's suffering from the dreaded L5-S1 herniated disc, that's in his lower back. Now there's only a few ways you can possibly treat that. One is with rest and rehab, which obviously hasn't been paying any dividends, the other is with microsurgery that would keep you out for about three months. The other is a spinal fusion, which makes it very difficult - if not impossible - for an elite athlete to come back from. So right now there are serious concerns ... and he's not close to getting on the ice."

Herniated discs are a notoriously difficult injury to treat, as emergency-room doctor and hockey blogger Jo Innes explained exhaustively here. The key thing to remember in Horton's case is surgery isn't a guaranteed fix, and in some cases can make a herniated disc even worse. Ideally, you just do physio, rest up, do your best to treat the injury and hope for the best.

Or, as Blue Jackets president John Davidson put it during a recent appearance on the "Marek vs. Wyshynski" podcast, "It may take a month, it may take six months, it make take a year. Who knows with backs?"