DETROIT -- Sure, it felt good to be back. New Jersey Devils goalie Cory Schneider started an NHL game Thursday for the first time since having surgery on his left hip May 1. He felt fine physically. He didn't feel too rusty.
But the Devils lost to the Detroit Red Wings 4-3 at Little Caesars Arena, and he was upset with a shot that leaked through his body on the penalty kill, a goal he allowed on the power play and his rebound control.
"You don't really take away a lot of positive out of this for me," he said afterward.
After all, he didn't come back for the sake of coming back. He came back to win, and he hasn't won in the regular season since Dec. 27, when he made 31 saves in a 3-1 win against the Red Wings at Prudential Center.
"Now it's up to me, all the work I've done, all the time and effort I've put into this, to make it worth something and go out and play well and be better than I was last year," he told NHL.com Wednesday.
Schneider cautioned he wasn't a doctor. But he's a smart guy who spent three years at Boston College, and he sounded like he went to medical school the way he described his ordeal.
The top of the femur, the femoral head, rotates in your hip joint. The labrum is a thin piece of cartilage around the femoral head "almost like a tire around a wheel," he said, allowing it to move.
A goalie wears on his hip joints over time as he drops into butterfly positions and scoots across his crease, and bone spurs can develop on the femoral head and inside the hip joint.
Schneider couldn't remember a singular instance when he felt a problem. He said it wasn't debilitating and pointed out he had a strong first half last season, going 17-6-4 with a .923 save percentage in his first 28 games.
But he went 0-10-2 with a .863 save percentage in his last 12 games, while missing more than a month with a groin injury that might have been related. He went 1-2 with a .950 save percentage in four games in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, a five-game loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Eastern Conference First Round.
"It got to the point if I was bringing my knees into a butterfly position -- internally rotated, they call it -- I'd get a pretty sharp pinch," he said. "And part of the problem is, that bone growth, it makes you stop. It hits the hip joint, and you can't go any further. So my range was somewhat limited."
Schneider underwent a 2 1/2- or three-hour procedure to repair his labrum and shave down the bone. He was off crutches 10 days afterward. Not that it mattered.
"Honestly, it wasn't overly painful or grueling or anything like that," he said. "But the hard part is, you can't really do anything for three months. They don't want you to run, jump, skate. You can lightly bike and do the rehab stretches and exercises. So those first three months, it's just boring. They say, 'If you think you can do something, don't do it. Do less.' "
From May 1 to July 31, Schneider worked on his upper body, core and good leg, and stayed diligent about his diet. Once he reached Aug. 1, he could go on the ice. Still, he had to take it slowly.
"It's basically learning to skate again," he said.
Week 1, circle and light turns. Week 2, a little more. And so on.
It wasn't until Week 6, mid-September, that he was able to drop into a butterfly again.
"I think we did it the right way in terms of going easy on it, so we didn't have any setbacks, no tendonitis, no things that can crop up if you go back too soon," he said.
DETROIT -- One save forced Cory Schneider to his back. A hectic scramble at the crease forced him to make two mores saves from the same position.
In a tie game with less than 10 minutes to play, a sequence of three saves by Schneider, where he needed to sprawl, stretch and extend to protect the net, truly tested where he was at physically.
It ultimately didn't matter in a 4-3 Devils loss to the Detroit Red Wings on Thursday at Little Caesars Arena, but in terms of proving Schneider's ability to physically handle an NHL game, it meant everything.
"I didn't really feel any limitations physically," Schneider said. "I was able to move freely and all that stuff. We'll see how it feels tonight and tomorrow and see how it responds, but again, physically there weren't any issues."