Coyle had broken his right fibula on October 12, 2017, while playing for the Wild. He underwent surgery and was out until Nov. 20. But, compensating for the original injury, he over-relied on his left leg. Over time, the muscle started pulling on his tendon. Eventually, it tore.
“But I didn’t know it for a few years,” he said.
In the summer of 2021, after his first full season as a member of the Bruins, Coyle had a second surgery, this time to repair an avulsion fracture in his left kneecap and a small tear of the patellar tendon. He was ready for training camp that fall. Coyle added an injection in the summer of 2022 -- “That set me behind, I still couldn’t do stuff,” he said – and it was only last summer that his knee finally, finally, finally felt better.
“This summer I was able to train fully on my leg,” he said. “It was awesome. I hadn’t ran or jumped in a while. So you feel good. Sometimes when you don’t do that, you feel like you’re just planted to the ground. You have no spring, you have no jump. So that was a big thing this summer was I was able to train without any restrictions.
