MIGHTY DUCK NOTEBOOK / ROBYN NORWOOD : King Trying to Rebuild Career After Surgeries

Imagine undergoing reconstructive shoulder surgery and working your way back. Then imagine finding out your other shoulder needs surgery too.

That’s what happened to Steven King, who hasn’t played an NHL game in a year-and-a-half.

Now he’s back again, trying to regain a place with the Mighty Ducks, a team that long ago moved on without him.

The good thing for King is that at 26, he still has time to catch up.

“Hopefully I have 24-year-old legs and 1-year-old shoulders,” he said.

When the Ducks picked their team in the expansion draft in 1993, King was the first forward they chose. They took him before Bob Corkum and Joe Sacco, two players now considered part of the team’s veteran core.

King played in 36 games that first season, scoring eight goals and 11 points before his right shoulder had to go under the knife in February. He tried to come back last fall, but by then his left shoulder was bothering him. When the NHL season was cut in half by labor problems, he decided he might as well cut his losses and have surgery to repair ligament damage in that one too.

“I don’t know what to think about Steven,” Coach Ron Wilson said. “He had shoulder problems right from Day 1 of the first training camp. We’ve never really seen Steven at his full potential.”

King says he feels 100% and isn’t worried about the hitting and contact that will start soon.

“I have to get my timing back and relearn how to play the game after being away so long,” he said. “I’ve got to work hard here at camp and pretty much compete with myself. You want to prove you can play to the coach and GM, but I’ve got to prove to myself I can play. I’ve got to get my career back on track.”

What he calls his “lonely journey back” might have prepared him. “It made me stronger mentally,” he said.

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It was just a typical first day of drills for most players, but for defenseman Don McSween, it was “a fun day . . . just to be out on the ice with the guys, amongst the chatter on the ice and in the locker room.”

McSween’s passes tended to bounce off the boards a few feet ahead of the receiver, his shots went wide and he often fumbled for the puck.

But less than eighth months after two nerves and nine tendons in his right wrist were accidentally severed by an opponent’s skate blade during a game, McSween returned to the ice in an NHL uniform, gamely trying to come back.

McSween, 31, has made progress in recent weeks but still has no feeling in his ring or pinky fingers, and the muscles in his right hand are so atrophied he wears an extra pad in his glove so he can hold onto his stick.

“I was able to make decent passes, carry the puck and move with the flow of the drills,” he said. “I can do these things when I have plenty of time, but as the intensity picks up when we start scrimmaging, we’ll see what I can do in a game situation. Then it’s a matter of time before I realize if I can contribute with the team.”