Anthony Mantha dealing with terrible consequences from injury

Washington Capitals forward Anthony Mantha was just starting to find his rhythm and confidence when it all came to a stop on Nov. 8 in a game against the Florida Panthers. Mantha was on a roll until a shot from his teammate Evgeny Kuznetsov went off a defenseman’s stick and got him right on the ear.

He felt a pop and immediately thought he has suffered a similar injury to teammate John Carlson. As you may remember, the blue liner was struck by a 90 MPH slapshot last season. The puck caught him just near the ear and sliced open his temporal artery, fracturing his skull.

“That’s the first thing that runs through your mind, you know?” Mantha recalled, sharing updates on his situation to Sammi Silber.

After all, Mantha was bleeding and couldn’t hear a single noise from his left ear.

“Once it happens, I was all unbalanced, dizzy on the ice. I knew I was bleeding, but I didn’t feel like getting up, because I feel like it just would have been worse, maybe falling back over, so I waited for some help.”

He assumed he had a concussion, got off the ice to get four to five stitches to repair the laceration to his ear. But he needed more tests and was taken to the hospital for CT scans to check for a skull fracture or internal bleeding of the brain.

His diagnosis: a ruptured eardrum that still has him dealing with consequences.

“There’s no timeline for that. They say six to eight weeks to get your hearing back, but for me to play doesn’t really affect it, you know? You hear a little bit better today, but it’s not the best,” Mantha noted.

For close to a week, Mantha couldn’t hear a thing from his left ear. He said it’s started to improve recently, but the first 36 hours saw him losing his entire equilibrium, dealing dizziness and vomiting and desperately waiting to feel better.

“Everything in your ear is your balance. It’s me puking for a couple hours, not feeling good. Everything going into that,” Mantha said. “It was bad for me for maybe 36 hours, and then I got better. Once I got better, it was the easiest. It’s not really rehab, because you can’t really do anything.”

Mantha is especially upset that the injury came when he was finding his groove back. Good news however is that Mantha has seen some improvement, enough that he is likely to draw back into the lineup for Saturday’s game against the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Mantha is looking to get back to action and, will be wearing ear guards moving forward.