Anaheim Ducks defender Brendan Guhle will be out for up to six week following a knee injury suffered in training camp on Thursday. Guhle underwent an MRI scan and on Friday, it was revealed he had sustained an MCL sprain in his right knee and is expected to be out for up to six weeks.
According to Ducks head coach Dallas Eakins, the injury occurred when Guhle was near the net and another player “fell into him awkwardly,” during a scrimmage at Great Park Ice in Irvine.
“It was just a total fluke,” Eakins told Orange County Register’s Elliotte Teaford. “It was one of those fluke things. It wasn’t like someone caught him with a knee, like, a knee-on-knee in the neutral zone or he caught some bad ice or anything like that. It was literally like a guy fell on him.”
The 23-year-old defender was drafted by the Buffalo Sabres in the second round (51 overall) of the 2015 NHL Entry Draft, out of the Prince Albert Raiders of the WHL. IN 2016, he made his NHL debut with the Sabres on an emergency call-up from the WHL, which saw him returned to the league once Buffalo had another defender return. He played a handful of NHL games with the Sabres until he was traded with a 2019 first-round pick to Anaheim, in exchange for defender Brandon Montour at the 2019 trade deadline.
Guhle signed two-year extension with the Ducks in May 2020 and carries a $800,000 cap hit. He’s still a bit of a project player, who had a very down year last season, but has a potential ceiling of a third-pairing defender.
Unfortunately, it does take a left-handed defender off the table for the Ducks, who also lost Christian Djoos on waivers this morning.