Chicago Blackhawks’ Connor Murphy on recovering from a concussion after a scary hit: ‘I didn’t remember anything that happened’

It was an unforgettable sight but one Connor Murphy couldn’t fully recall at first.

During a March 12 game in Ottawa, Senators winger Parker Kelly drove into the Hawks defenseman in the corner just above the goal line, and the force of the collision slammed Murphy’s head into the glass. Murphy lay motionless for several minutes before medical staff carted him off on a stretcher.

“I didn’t regain memory until I was already in the training room, so I didn’t remember anything that happened,” he said Tuesday. “I just remember getting on the ice for that shift.”

Murphy hasn’t played since, going on long-term injured reserve under concussion protocols.

But he has been skating by himself and with teammates in recent weeks, and he addressed media for the first time to discuss the experience and his recovery.

“Thinking about when you gain memory, you think you’re going to come to and be in shock, but I was pretty calm,” Murphy said after practicing with Kirby Dach and Jujhar Khaira — two other Hawks sidelined by injuries — among other teammates. “They told me right away what happened when I asked again. I didn’t want to see the hit right away, but I wasn’t too rattled when I saw that either. (You) understand it’s part of the game.”

Murphy said he was more concerned about giving his family and friends a scare. “So I was fortunate that was the case and just hated they had to see that.”

Kelly later said he “felt bad” about the hit and sought out Murphy at the time: “He accepted my apology.”

Murphy described some of the symptoms he felt.

“I had some headaches and just memory stuff and then the typical feeling off,” he said. “There’s just some of the typical cloudy feelings you get from concussions.”

But now, a month and a half later, “I feel good physically, really good actually,” Murphy said.

“The hard thing has been with the head stuff, there’s not enough research to know for sure if you’re 100% or when that is. You just kind of look at history and what the symptoms were like and how close together certain concussions were and the severity of each one of them.

“(I’m) lucky to have a great medical staff here that’s been helping a lot along the way and gotten me to feeling good now.”

Even so, coach Derek King shut down Murphy and Dach (right shoulder sprain) for the season this week.

“Yeah, I would love to have them, but I don’t think that’s what our game plan is,” King said Monday. “I think all the guys who are hurt, it’s more just, when they leave here, they know that they’re OK to skate, work out and have a good summer instead of being halfway through summer and you’re still not cleared and you don’t know where you are.”

Murphy said one of the most difficult parts of his absence has been watching the Hawks struggle without him, including an 0-6-2 stretch.

“Not having the (two) games left to play (in the season) is frustrating,” he said, “and having to see your team go through a couple of losing streaks … and not being able to be around it to help at all is hard.”