Edmonton Oilers’ Connor Brown leaves game early with apparent lower-body injury

Edmonton Oilers winger Connor Brown left Thursday’s game against the Dallas Stars with an apparent lower-body injury.

Brown, 29, left the game in the middle of the second period after making a routine crossover with his skates, and appeared to tweak something in his lower-body. There’s currently no word on the specifics of the injury, particularly if it’s the same ACL injury he dealt with last season, or how much time he may miss to recover from it. He left the game with two shots on goal in 6:25 of ice time as the Oilers would lose 4-3 to the Stars.

Brown has struggled so far in his first season with the Oilers, as he’s failed to register a point through nine games. He actually hasn’t gotten a point since the 2021-22 season, more specifically on April 18th, 2022 when he played for the Ottawa Senators, as he also didn’t get a point in four games with the Washington Capitals before he missed the rest of the year with his ACL injury. He had 10 goals, 29 assists, and 39 points in 64 games in his last full season in 2021-22.

Brown is a former sixth-round draft pick of the Toronto Maple Leafs, spending four seasons of his NHL career with them before he was part of a deal that saw the Leafs offload Nikita Zaitsev’s contract to the Senators. He spent three years in Ottawa before he was dealt to the Caps, and then after missing most of the season, he signed with Edmonton in the offseason to reunite with former Erie Otters teammate Connor McDavid.

Brown is currently on a one-year, $775,000 deal with the Oilers, and will be an unrestricted free agent this offseason. His contract comes with a $3,225,000 performance bonus that kicks in at 10 games played, which he would have hit in his next game.