For the last four years, Tyler Johnson has not been able to sleep on his stomach. He is battling a neck injury that has prevented him from doing so.
Johnson would feel it some days and not so much on others, but eventually it got to a point where he actually convinced himself that everything was normal when, in fact, it wasn't. That all changed in early December when he underwent artificial disc replacement surgery (ADR).
Now? Johnson feels brand new.
"It's honestly crazy," Johnson said ahead of Sunday's game against his former Tampa Bay Lightning team. "I don't wake up with a stiff neck in the morning anymore, so I'm very happy about it."
Johnson estimates the injury originally occurred in 2017 or 2018. Fast-forward to this past season and he took a hit in a game that "made it a little worse."
And then, against Carolina on October 29, 2021, everything came to a head when storm forward Vincent Trochek pushed Johnson from behind and into a strange-looking fall into Martin Necas. Johnson's neck pressed against the back of the Neckas, and he did not return what the team later called a "neck tightness".
Well, it turned out to be much more than that.
"I had numbness and tingling in my hand for about a month," Johnson said. "So it felt like I needed to do something about it."
After consulting several different doctors, Johnson opted for ADR surgery instead of fusion, which is a more proven procedure.
Jack Eichel was the first player in NHL history to undergo ADR surgery — three weeks before Johnson — and that's a big reason he's no longer with the Buffalo Sabers. He had been pushing to do this for a while and the Sabers doctors did not give him the green light to do so.
The Blackhawks didn't mind, and the fact that Johnson was able to pave the way for that type of procedure to Eichel certainly made him more comfortable deciding that he should do the same.
"I don't know if it would have changed anything, but I think it really helped me to know that he did a lot more research than I did," Johnson responded if he had gone down this route. If Eichel didn't. "He didn't spend about a year or so learning what about it. It made me feel a little bit better in that sense."
And it's a good thing that Johnson chose ADR because of the severity of the injury.
"When [the doctors] went in, they said it was worse than they thought," Johnson said. "It wasn't going to come back on its own; we had to do something. I'm lucky I got the support I needed and was able to do it."
There were also benefits in going the ADR route as opposed to the Fusion, in Johnson's eyes.
"The road to recovery after [fusion] is very difficult," Johnson said. "I certainly would have done this all year long, maybe even a lot more in the summer. And then who knows how I'll feel next year?
"The younger I am, the more you're going to be seeing another Fusion, or even two Fusion for the rest of your life. It was something that stuck with me, that I could solve that problem." Didn't want to keep. If you do ADR there's a chance you'll never have to mess with it again, or you can always go the fusion route if something happens, but you can't go the opposite."
Johnson is finally back in Chicago's lineup after a three-month recovery and he is feeling better than ever.
"Physically, I feel great," Johnson said. "I don't have anything that I would consider a setback or limitations or anything like that. Obviously it's mentally tough to spend so much time away from the game, trying to make decisions and come back a little bit about things." .that. I've never spent so much time away from the snow...it's the longest time ever.
"But rehab was going really well here. They put me on ice every day, so it was great. But you can't really repeat that game. Still trying to get back into it a little bit." . trying to learn as things go and still trying to learn the system a little bit. It's still new to me. It's a work in progress."