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Ducks may be forced to play without Gibson again

Screen Shot 2018-04-02 at 10.48.47 AM

It’s been a tough year for Anaheim Ducks goalie John Gibson, who has been sidelined by injury on three different occasions this year.

He missed one game because of a concussion on Nov. 9, he sat out four games because of a lower-body injury in early February and three more games for the same reason later on that month. Unfortunately for Gibson and the Ducks, he might be forced to miss more time after he suffered an injury in Sunday’s game against the Colorado Avalanche.

Here’s how the injury happened:

As you can tell from the video above, Ryan Kesler pushed Gabriel Landeskog right into Gibson. Only Landeskog knows if he actually could have avoided the Ducks netminder or not, but Kesler seemed to believe that what the Avs forward did was intentional.

“[Landeskog] threw himself at (Gibson). I gave him a slight jab and he knows what he’s doing there, obviously,” Kesler said after the game, per Mike Coppinger.

Regardless of how or why he got injured, the Ducks will have to hope that he’s not out for an extended period of time. Not only is the end of the regular season less than a week away, the Ducks also haven’t clinched their spot in the playoffs.

There’s no denying that the 24-year-old has been the team’s most valuable player throughout 2017-18. He has a 31-18-7 record with a 2.43 goals-against-average and a .926 save percentage this season. Backup Ryan Miller is a capable goaltender, too, but he can’t play at the same level (anymore) that Gibson has been playing at this year.

As if losing Gibson wasn’t enough, the Ducks also lost defenseman Cam Fowler last night. Here’s the only update that was provided after the game:

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Joey Alfieri is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @joeyalfieri.