Faber Back on the Ice: Wild Star Returns to Practice Six Weeks After Fractured Skull

The sound was the same as always — skates cutting ice, sticks tapping, coaches calling out drills — but for Brock Faber, Thursday morning at the Wild's practice rink sounded like a small victory.

Six weeks after a puck struck the side of his helmet and fractured his skull, the Minnesota defenceman took part in his first full practice with his teammates, wearing plastic ear guards on his helmet and, by all accounts, flying around the ice like a man who had never been away. He took part in penalty-kill drills. He kept up with the pace.

"I'm so glad to just put it in the past. It's so good to be back," Faber said.

The injury itself was as frightening as it was freakish. In the Wild's final preseason game on September 25, a shot deflected and caught Faber on the side of his helmet, near the left ear hole. He felt fine at first — he stayed down briefly, skated to the bench under his own power, and even played out the rest of the second period. He did not return for the third. Later that night, a CT scan at Regions Hospital in St. Paul revealed the fracture, and he had surgery on September 27, spending three days in hospital.

What followed was the hardest part, and it had nothing to do with pain. Faber said he felt completely fine just a few days after surgery, "which was almost the hardest part." He knew his body felt normal and his head felt completely normal — he just couldn't do anything. A month of no physical activity, for a 24-year-old who had spent the whole summer preparing for the season, was its own kind of punishment.

"You get to training camp and it's full-go, and then obviously snap of the finger and then you're sitting on the couch for four weeks straight," he said. "I don't know the last time I haven't done any physical activity in that long."

The Wild have coped without him better than anyone could have expected — 11-3-3 and top of the Central Division — but that says as much about how much they have missed him as it does about their depth. Last season Faber put up 51 points, 15 goals and 36 assists, in 80 games, averaging 24:41 of ice time a night, second on the team. He is the player they lean on in every situation, and getting him back, even gradually, changes what this team can be.

Coach John Hynes was careful not to rush it. Faber has been cleared by team doctors to play, but he still needs to build his strength and conditioning back up, and the timeline, in Hynes' words, remains "a little bit of a moving target." He will not play in either of Minnesota's home games this weekend, against San Jose on Friday or Tampa Bay on Saturday. He will, though, travel with the team on next week's three-game road trip, which opens Tuesday in Montreal, then Toronto on Thursday and Boston next Saturday.

Faber, for his part, never doubted he would be back quickly. "I didn't really let myself feel any other way than I'd be playing in a month," he said. "I missed it by a couple weeks." On Thursday, back among his teammates for the first time since September — Jared Spurgeon and both Foligno brothers were on the ice too — he finally got to prove it.