Semin To Miss The Start Of The Season?

What's the real story with Alex Semin's knee?

On Monday, Tarik reported that Semin's agent, Mark Gandler, claimed that reports of a supposed knee injury to the winger were exaggerated and that the pain was "as insignificant as anything you can have."

A day later, this report claimed otherwise (note that this could just be cribbed from the same report to which Gandler was presumably responding). Translated via Google, the text reads:

Semin may miss season start

Legionary of NHL Alexander Semin, who was in St. Petersburg, Russia left because of deteriorating knee injury. According to "Sport" day by day, the operation was ordered by doctors to "Washington" even at the end of the season, but he ignored the requirement and now hardly able to recover to a new regular season.

The translation could be better, of course, but that headline's pretty clear.

So is there cause for concern? I guess that depends on how inclined you are to believe the agent for a player entering a contract year (and an online translator of a questionable foreign source, for that matter).