Penguins defenseman Kris Letang underwent successful surgery to close a small hole in his heart called a patent foramen ovale, the team announced. He’ll miss the team’s final regular-season game but is expected back for training camp in the fall. The recovery time for the procedure is four to six weeks.
It’s a scary headline for a player who’s had a few of them in his lengthy career, so such a brief recovery window immediately comes across as good news. The two-time All-Star had strokes that caused him to miss significant portions of the 2013-14 and 2022-23 seasons, as well as a herniated disk in his neck that kept him from suiting up in the Penguins’ run to the Stanley Cup in 2017. While PFOs are usually innocuous…