Ducks’ Ondrej Kase out for remainder of season with shoulder injury

Watch as Nick Ritchie uses an alley-oop pass to find Ondrej Kase who makes no mistake in close, giving the Ducks an early lead.

This season just keeps getting worse for the Anaheim Ducks.

Anaheim has lost 14 of its past 16 games, was outshot 32-13 in an embarrassing 5-1 home loss to the St. Louis Blues Wednesday night, and on top of that the team announced winger Ondrej Kase requires surgery and will miss the next 5-6 months, effectively ending his season.

Kase sustained a torn labrum in Sunday’s 3-0 loss to the New York Islanders. Ducks general manager Bob Murray told reporters in Anaheim the surgery is scheduled for Jan. 30.

The 23-year-old ranks second on the Ducks with 11 goals despite missing the first 18 games of the season with a concussion.

Even with the team’s recent struggles, the Ducks sit just one point out of a Western Conference wild-card spot with 31 games remaining, yet they’ve performed so poorly since mid-December that making the playoffs at this point doesn’t seem realistic.

Anaheim has scored the second-fewest goals in the league, allowed the third-most shots against and has registered the fewest shots on goal. They’ve also traded away eight players since the beginning of the season.

Kase joins Ryan Kesler, Ryan Miller and Jakob Silfverberg as players currently on Anaheim’s injured reserve, while Corey Perry and Patrick Eaves remain on long-term IR.

To give you a sense of just how crestfallen Ducks fans currently are as the NHL’s 31 teams head into the all-star break, here’s a small sampling of the responses to the news that Kase is out long-term.

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