New York Islanders forward Anthony Duclair leaves game early with brutal looking injury

New York Islanders forward Anthony Duclair left tonight's contest against the Montreal Canadiens early after he injured himself skating around a defender.

Duclair joins a growing list of NHL star players currently on injured reserve. We have seen so many players go down early this year from Drew Doughty and Patrik Laine in the preseason to Aleksander Barkov and Macklin Celebrini in the regular season. Even the Islanders opponent tonight is dealing with injuries as the Habs have lost two of their most important defenseman recently. Unfortunately, that's just the way things go in the NHL sometimes. It is a very physical sport and injuries happen.

Based on the way this play happened, it seems like it may have been a groin strain for Duclair. These can be very painful, which would explain why he spent so much time on the ice and had to be helped off. If it is, he could miss a lot of time depending on how severe it is. Hopefully, it was just a mild one though and he can return to the ice sooner than some might be expecting.

Duclair signed a four-year contract with the Islanders this summer worth 14 million dollars, carrying an average-annual-value of 3.5 million dollars. He has two goals and an assist through four games this season. If the team is to beat out expectations and get back into the playoffs this year, he will likely be a notable part of that success, so this injury could be a fairly substantial setback for the team. We will just have to see how they play without him.

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