Injury Report: Katic Out With Torn Labrum

ESPN's Katie Strang reported on her blog this afternoon that depth defenseman Mark Katic's suspected dislocated shoulder is actually a torn labrum. Surgery seems to be the most likely option at this point, which if he recovers at the same rate as Kyle Okposo would keep him out until January.

Katic left Tuesday's rookie game against the Boston Bruins hunched over in visible pain.

CH: This is just a tough, tough break for Katic. Entering the third year of his ELC, he was expected to be counted on for the Sound Tigers with an outside shot at playing some games for the Islanders. Now, he'll be missing the first half of the season and will most likely use the remainder of the season shaking off the rust and such. Katic's long-term outlook with the team is somewhat bleak as well, with a lot of depth coming up the system and a limited amount of spots. I would still expect the Isles to offer him a qualifying offer after the year though, given Katic's skating ability and development track.

Unfortunately, this hurts the Sound Tigers - who really need all the help they can get. Losing Katic moves everyone up a spot, which could force the team to play players more minutes than they may be ready for. Let's hope the Sound Tigers are able to withstand this injury, but losing Katic and potentially Rhett Rakhshani long term is not going to make life easy for the team at all.

AT: Very disappointing, and now the THIRD major shoulder injury in the past two seasons to hit the Islanders during pre-season activities. I know the Islanders hired Sean Donnelan to handle injuries, but this is very scary to see happen again. It's good that he will be back before the end of the season, but as we saw with Kyle Okposo, he will most likely come back extremely rusty. As player in the 3rd year of his ELC, this has to be one of the most frustrating endeavors for him to face in his entire hockey career so far. Any way you put it, this is very disappointing. I do believe the Sound Tigers will be able to weather this with the addition of Calvin De Haan, Aaron Ness and Matt Donovan as full time D-men, but losing Katic still hurts.