Salei Shakes Off Injury, Returns to Action

After five days of skating in circles, defenseman Ruslan Salei finally joined teammates for his first real workout of training camp. A balky left hip kept him from participating in drills until Thursday.

Salei is not expected to play in the Ducks’ exhibitions Saturday at San Jose, Sunday against the Kings at Staples Center or Monday against Phoenix at the Arrowhead Pond. But his return to action trimmed the number of absent Ducks to three.

Defenseman Oleg Tverdovsky remains unsigned and is not at training camp. Defenseman Pascal Trepanier has a sore knee, but could return to the ice today. Winger Kevin Sawyer continues solo workouts because of a strained back.

“He looked pretty good,” Coach Craig Hartsburg said of Salei, who battled a nagging toe injury for most of last season. “I’m sure he’s a little behind everybody else. We’ll watch him and see how he’s doing.”

Salei isn’t certain how he injured himself. He said he began to feel pain in his left hip while skating about two weeks before the opening of camp last Saturday.

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Defenseman Pavel Trnka sat out the final 10 games last season because of a sprained left ankle, suffered on a questionable hit March 17 by San Jose’s Owen Nolan. So far in camp, Trnka has shown no signs of the injury. Spending the summer working out in his native Czech Republic has helped his fitness.

“Sometimes I worked out four times a day,” he said. “I’m only 24. I can get better.”

Trnka merely shrugged when asked who he figured to play with as a defense pair this season. “It’s too early to tell,” he said. “There are still 12 defensemen here in camp.”

Like many others, he has noticed the Ducks are a faster skating team than last season. “Even in the scrimmage [Tuesday], it was a fast game,” he said.

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Hartsburg will announce his lineup today for Saturday’s exhibition opener against the Sharks at San Jose Arena. “I’ve got a lineup filled out, but I haven’t told the players yet,” he said. “Things could still change.”

Guy Hebert is not expected to play much in the first three exhibitions as Jean-Sebastien Giguere, Gregg Naumenko and Dominic Roussel get most of the work.

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Dan Moriarty, host of the “NHL Cool Shots” TV program, will spend three days next week training with the expansion Minnesota Wild before taking the ice Wednesday for an exhibition against the Ducks at the Pond. Moriarty, 40, is a former college player. His adventures will be chronicled in an upcoming episode of the show.