The Vegas Golden Knights and Edmonton Oilers have been trading blowouts in their second-round playoff series and on Wednesday night it was the Oilers that took it to the Golden Knights. Edmonton put four unanswered goals past Vegas and held on for an eventual 4-1 win to even up the series at two wins apiece.

Late in the game, it was clear Vegas was becoming more and more frustrated with their lack of offensive success and defenseman Alex Pietrangelo decided to take out some of that frustration on star Oilers center Leon Draisaitl.

Pietrangelo reared back and viciously two-hand chopped Draisaitl’s arm.

The incident occurred with 90 seconds remaining in regulation with the game already out of reach for Vegas. The Golden Knights had their netminder pulled and Draisaitl broke into their zone attempting to add another marker to the scoreboard.

After firing a backhand attempt wide of the yawning cage, Draisaitl has a few seconds to observe the puck tumble into the opposite corner before Pietrangelo comes across him incredibly late and with apparent arm-breaking intent. Oilers captain Connor McDavid, who rarely gets involved in rough stuff, went after Pietrangelo after the play was stopped for penalties to be doled out

Pietrangelo received a five-minute major for the play and was handed a game misconduct ejection for intent to injure.

Shortly after, Edmonton’s Darnell Nurse and Vegas’ Nicolas Hague dropped the gloves behind the net and exchanged haymakers. Nurse taunted the Golden Knights’ bench as he was ushered off the ice. Both players had blood stains on their jerseys.

McDavid lobbied the league to suspend Pietrangelo for the brutal slash postgame.

“Well, you’d like to see it reviewed for sure,” McDavid said. “I would like to see it suspended. I mean it’s as intent to injure as you can get. You know, time, score, clock all play a factor. He comes from over his own head and places it just kinda under Leon’s chin. You’d like to see something like that suspended. That’s not a hockey play.”

Draisaitl does not appear to be injured as a result of the slash which is great news for Edmonton as he’s torched Vegas for six goals in four games and has 13 goals overall in 10 playoff games.

GOAL NO. 4 IN GAME 1 💰

Leon Draisaitl is a certified scoring machine 🦾 pic.twitter.com/3aQxRrdbsa

— ESPN (@espn) May 4, 2023

This same series saw Evander Kane’s brutal beatdown of Keegan Kolesar in Game Two. With this recent play from Pietrangelo the temperature in the remaining games could still rise.

Game Five is set for 10 pm ET on Friday in Vegas.

Update (11:00 am): Pietrangelo will be receiving a call from NHL Player Safety about the slash.

Vegas’ Alex Pietrangelo will have a hearing today for Slashing against Edmonton’s Leon Draisaitl.

— NHL Player Safety (@NHLPlayerSafety) May 11, 2023

Screenshot via Sportsnet