Panther might miss 3 months

DAVID J. NEAL 

By looking at his face Tuesday, you would have known Panthers right wing Valeri Bure could miss two to three months while recovering from knee cartilage surgery. 

There was was no smile. 

Bure, whose perpetual smile epitomizes the term ``sunny,'' said: ``It's so frustrating because you can't control it.'' 

Injuries just happen. 

``You try to prevent it, by stretching and making sure you're in good condition, but things happen,'' Bure said. ``I don't think it matters when it happens. But for it to happen at the start of the season is pretty frustrating.'' 

Tonight's game against Washington will be the third Bure has missed because of the torn meniscus. The optimistic end of the prognosis has Bure returning Dec. 15, against the Islanders. The Panthers will have played 30 games. Bure will have played six. The pessimistic end projects Jan. 12, after 44 games. 

That's an eternity to a player, and a team that has one win after eight games, few veteran scorers and just one game -- that win -- in which it has scored more than two goals. 

The crutches will last a week or two, until the knee is reevaluated to see if it can bear weight. ``I want to throw them out right now,'' Bure said. ``I've had enough already.'' 

Things went from annoying to ``uh-oh'' to ``we have a situation'' last week. 

Bure's knee had been sore since the preseason, but he didn't think anything of it. On Oct. 15, Bure didn't skate. The next day, Bure participated in the morning skate and the first two periods of the Panthers' tie with Vancouver. 

``I guess [it happened because of] the way I turned [on it],'' he said. ``That's my theory. It was probably already a little torn because I just turned and tweaked a little bit. I felt an extremely sharp pain in my knee. I couldn't step on it. I realized something went bad and it sure did.'' 

Doctors at Calgary, where Bure played from February 1998 until his trade to the Panthers last summer, examined the knee. Bure was told he could miss two to 12 weeks. 

``I was, like, `Twelve weeks. Are you kidding me? What's in there for it to be 12 weeks?' '' Bure said. ``He said, `The meniscus.' So he had already given me a little shock.'' 

After Friday's MRI in South Florida revealed more bad news, opening the knee revealed the cartilage was torn.