For the second time this season, the Anaheim Ducks will be without Trevor Zegras for an extended period, with the forward suffering a broken ankle that will see him miss six to eight weeks.
Zegras suffered the injury Tuesday in the Ducks’ 5-3 win against the Nashville Predators, which also happened to be his 200th NHL game.
He was injured less than seven minutes into the game when he was entangled with Predators forward Juuso Parssinen, which led to Zegras falling feetfirst into the boards. As Zegras skated back to the Ducks bench, it appeared as if he could not put any weight on his left skate and had to be helped off the ice.
Zegras, who has seven points in 20 games, already missed 20 games after suffering a lower-body injury in early November that did not see him return to the lineup until Dec. 23 when he scored a goal in the Ducks’ 3-2 loss to the Seattle Kraken.
The Ducks also announced that they would be without rookie defensemen Pavel Mintyukov for six weeks after the 20-year-old suffered a separated shoulder in the same game against the Predators.
Mintyukov was one of the reasons why the Ducks won nine of their first 15 games under first-year coach Greg Cronin. The puck-moving defenseman was averaging more than 18 minutes per game in a top-four role while also quarterbacking the Ducks’ first-team power-play unit.
The Ducks (14-25-1) entered Thursday just eight points ahead of the San Jose Sharks for the NHL’s worst record.
