Sharks captain out for season due to groin injury

San Jose Sharks captain Logan Couture has announced that he won’t play again this season due to a groin injury in a press conference with team media, per Sheng Peng of San Jose Hockey Now.

Couture didn’t make his season debut until Jan. 20, missing the season’s first half with a lower-body injury. He played in just six games, and recorded just one assist, before re-aggravating the injury and once again exiting the lineup. Couture didn’t play any games outside of the last two weeks of January. His season now ends before it really got started, marking the first year Couture has missed since making his NHL debut in 2009-10.

The 15-year-pro quickly established himself as a backbone of the Sharks lineup, scoring 32 goals and 56 points in the 2010-11 season, his first full year in the NHL. He scored 31 goals and 65 points in the subsequent season – and has since crossed the 30-goal mark just one additional time, in 2017-18, and crossed the 60-point mark four more times, including when he scored a career-high 70 points in 2018-19.

Couture has served as San Jose’s captain for each of the last five seasons after four seasons as an alternate captain, taking over the role from Joe Pavelski. Couture has seen it all in his 933 career games with the Sharks, going from a fringe playoff contender to a Stanley Cup hopeful to one of the league’s bottom-dwellers throughout the 2010s. He ranks fourth in all-time scoring among Sharks with 701 career points, and fifth in all-time games played. He is signed through the end of the 2026-27 season, carrying an $8M cap hit, and will aim to play in his 1,000th NHL game when he returns next season.