Alex Ovechkin laid out Jake Gardiner in the first period with a mighty (and clean) hit. One wonders if that hit pissed off Nazem Kadri, as he did a dirty hit on Ovechkin later that period.
Ovi flipped, suffering an apparent leg injury. He stayed down.
^ That’s your nightmare scenario.
Here’s the hit from Kadri. It’s late, it’s clipping, it’s bad.
Ovi did not get up.
Kadri’s knee first made contact with Ovechkin’s left shin.
The Caps head athletic trainer, Greg Smith, rushed out and tended to Ovi, who required help to get to the locker room.
The refs called it a minor penalty for tripping, which is laughable.
On the resulting power play, the Caps were furious. Nicklas Backstrom put a shot on net, and TJ Oshie scopped up the rebound to score just 40 seconds later.
Here’s another look.
Ovechkin did not return in the first period. We are watching his status as close as we’ve watched anything in our career, but here’s one perspective on the matter.
8:15 PM update: OVI DOESN’T BREAK. He started the second period.
Full Coverage of Caps vs Maple Leafs
Russian Machine Never Breaks is not associated with the Washington Capitals; Monumental Sports, the NHL, or its properties. Not even a little bit.
All original content on russianmachineneverbreaks.com is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)– unless otherwise stated or superseded by another license. You are free to share, copy, and remix this content so long as it is attributed, done for noncommercial purposes, and done so under a license similar to this one.
Share On