"The two least surprising things in the postscript to the Brad Marchand-Sami Salo incident is that Marchand never apologized for causing the injury and that Salo will overcome it as he has so much else.

Salo, the 37-year-old who has beaten an arm's-length list of injuries to keep his National Hockey League career going, practised Friday with the Vancouver Canucks for the first time since suffering a concussion on Jan. 7 when Marchand "submarined" the defenceman.

Even with the hostility of the Canucks-Bruins rivalry, Vancouver defenceman Aaron Rome texted Nathan Horton after injuring the Boston winger with a late hit last June, while Bruin blueliner Johnny Boychuk sent a note to forward Mason Raymond after the Canuck suffered fractured vertebrae in the same Stanley Cup Final.

But Salo never heard from Marchand, who even after a precedent-setting five-game suspension for ducking into the Canuck's knees maintained his innocence and argued that black was white.

"I'm lucky I didn't break my neck," Salo said Friday, answering questions for the first time since landing heavily on the back of his head and neck when upended by Marchand during the Canucks' 4-3 win in Boston two weeks ago. "You can't play the game thinking about what other guys might do. You can't play the game ... thinking this guy might elbow me or something.

"It happened pretty quickly and I couldn't react. That's why I was angry. It wasn't a hockey play and I was angry. But that's in the past and my focus is to get better. I'm feeling better every day, so we'll see how it goes the next few days.""