Adel initially appeared to be clutching at his knee when he left the floor late in Tuesday's loss, but it was ultimately a calf strain left him floored as Bryce Cotton sealed the deal for the Cats.

The 23-year-old will undergo scans late on Wednesday to determine the full extent of the injury, but he will take no part in Thursday's second clash with the defending champs in Perth.

He'a also at long odds for Sunday's clash with the Kings in Sydney and, with Cam Bairstow also unavailable due to lingering knee soreness, Goorjian admits it's a headache less than a month out from the season-opener.

"It's a concern, on the positive it's not a knee or an achilles," Goorjian said.

"He's been our most important player, you could see [on Tuesday] he can handle the ball against pressure, he can defend Bryce Cotton, when we're struggling to get a shot he can take a guy and make a play.

"He hasn't been our highest scorer, but our most valuable player. As we sit going into the next game, we've put together a young team and our two marquee players are Adel and Bairstow. Both of them are out.

"One thing we could see with Sydney and with Perth, is that they know how to play together. For us, it's not a team that's been together for two years where you can have a guy who was out and just [easily] bring him in before the season.

"We're learning how to play together so it's not just the fact [Adel's] out for a period of time, it's that it's really hard to move forward in playing together without such key pieces. I walked away from the game feeling good about things other than the Adel-Bairstow situation."

Read more: Adel injured as Hawks fall short in preseason opener

Tuesday's loss to the Cats followed a competition-scrimmage against the Kings - who'll they'll face in a preseason-proper clash in Sydney on Sunday - and Goorjian feels Tuesday's performance was a step up.

"I thought there was a huge jump from our scrimmage against Sydney [last week] to that game," he said.

"We played better, not good enough, but we played better. At this time of year we're trying to move these young guys along at hyper-speed and playing last grand-finalists and two-time champions on their court, it's exposing what we're not good at and what we've got to get better at.

"There were a lot of good things and a lot of concerns."

With the Hawks showing a formidable offensive arsenal in imports Justinian Jessup (24 points) Tyler Harvey (20), the bulk of those concerns are at the defensive end, with Goorjian saying his side can't give the Cats the saloon passage to the basket they enjoyed on Tuesday.

"The biggest concern right now, and where I'm putting a lot of pressure, is I thought we were really poor [Tuesday] night, and against Sydney, defensively on straight-line drives," he said.

"There's guys just getting the ball and pulling through on us and getting to the basket. They shot 32 free-throws, made 25, we made nine. There was a 16-17 point difference from the free-throw line.

"The offense is where it is butI think it's moving along at the pace it should be for a new team. Last year [the Hawks] was the worst defensive team in the league and we've got a lot of new guys who were falling into a pattern defensively that I'm going to be very hard on."