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Mark Giordano needs season-ending surgery on torn biceps tendon

Photo by Gerry Thomas/NHLI via Getty Images

Mark Giordano attempted to play through an arm injury suffered last week, but after he took warmups against the New York Islanders on Friday night, he felt he just couldn’t go. The diagnosis? A torn biceps, a complete tendon tear. According to Flames GM Brad Treliving, that’s a four-to-five month recovery time.

Calgary has dropped six of their last 10 games and are clinging to a playoff spot with the Los Angeles Kings and San Jose Sharks right behind them.

It’s a huge blow for both the Flames. They lose their best player and leading scorer as they slowly drop out of the Western Conference playoff picture. It’s also tough news for Giordano, who many had pegged as a Norris Trophy favorite and some had on a long list for the Hart Trophy. He missed a little over a month last season due to a broken ankle, an injury that likely cost him a spot on Team Canada’s entry at the Sochi Olympics.

Despite the free-fall, Treliving stuck to his guns and didn’t mortgage the future to help claw out a playoff spot.

“Nothing changes in terms of our mindset, in the sense that you’re always looking to help yourself,” Treliving said last week ahead of the trade deadline, via the Calgary Sun. “But it’s got to make sense to you — the price has got to fit, and the fit has to be there. You have to be able to go out and find somebody it makes sense to come in. You can’t be reactive in any situation. You get to be reactive then all of a sudden, you wake up and think, ‘What the heck did we do here?’”

The only moves Treliving made were sending Curtis Glencross to Washington, a player who the team couldn’t work out an extension with, and moving Sven Baertschi, an RFA who asked out and expressed a lack of interest in re-signing, to Vancouver. He brought in a pair of 2015 second-round picks and a 2015 third-rounder, nice assets that he could always flip at the Draft to improve for next season.

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Sean Leahy is the associate editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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