Ottawa Senators captain Brady Tkachuk nearly had his nose broken in his NHL return after winning Olympic gold with Team USA in Milan.
Facing the visiting Detroit Red Wings in Canada’s capital on Thursday, Tkachuk was on the receiving end of a brutal blindside hit from 6ft6 Swedish defenseman Simon Edvinsson.
Tkachuk, who was watching the puck soar overhead when he was crushed by Edvinsson, had his own stick bounce back into his face, nearly breaking his nose. He quickly dropped to the ice as teammate Dylan Cozens dropped gloves with Edvinsson.
Both players were sent to the box, as was Tkachuk, who got a 10-minute misconduct after trying to confront Edvinsson.
Tkachuk and Edvinsson continued chirping at each other from their respective penalty boxes as they both gestured to the replay being played on the scoreboard.
Detroit ultimately won in overtime on a goal from Tkachuk’s Team USA teammate, Dylan Larkin.
Facing the visiting Detroit Red Wings in Canada’s capital on Thursday, Tkachuk was on the receiving end of a brutal blindside hit from 6ft6 Swedish defenseman Simon Edvinsson
Head athletic therapist Domenic Nicoletta of the Ottawa Senators assists Brady Tkachuk
Simon Edvinsson of the Detroit Red Wings fights Dylan Cozens after the hit on Tkachuk
Senators spokespeople did not respond to the Daily Mail’s request for an update on Tkachuk.
Thursday’s loss came after Tkachuk criticized the White House over an AI social media video.
After winning gold against the rival Canadians, Tkachuk and 19 other members of Team USA visited Trump at the White House before watching State of the Union speech on Tuesday night.
But since then, the White House released a misleading AI clip on TikTok in which Tkachuk appeared to criticize Canadians.
‘They booed our national anthem, so I had to come out and teach those maple-syrup-eating f***s a lesson,’ Tkachuk said in the altered clip which had more than 11 million views on TikTok.
Tkachuk responded to the clip ahead of Thursday’s game.
‘Well, it’s clearly fake, because it’s not my voice, not my lips moving,’ Tkachuk said Thursday. ‘I’m not in control of any of those accounts. I know that those words would never come out of my mouth. So, I can’t do anything about it.’
USA hockey star Brady Tkachuk has fumed over an AI-edited video posted by the White House
When asked if he enjoyed the video, he added: ‘It’s not my voice. It’s not what I was saying.
‘I would never say that. That’s not who I am, so I guess I don’t like that video because that would never come out of my mouth and never had that thought.’
Trump also sparked controversy after footage of his phone call with the victorious men’s team surfaced on social media.
While congratulating them on winning gold, the President joked that he was also ‘going to have to bring the women’s team’ to Washington after they also beat Canada in the final.
Trump then added that he ‘probably would be impeached’ if he didn’t extend the invitation to America’s female hockey champions.
The women’s team subsequently turned down Trump’s invitation due to ‘scheduled academic and professional commitments following the Games.’
And Tkachuk said he understood why they could have felt insulted by his locker-room joke, which some have labeled misogynistic.
‘I mean, I get it,’ he said before detailing the positive relationship between the men’s and women’s teams. ‘We support them, they support us. You can’t control what other people say. It was fun being around them, seeing how they play and the excellence around them.
‘If I see one of them, we’ll talk about the excitement of what we can control, which is to be gold medalists.’
Tkachuk was also accused by some of shouting ‘Close the northern border!’ during the congratulatory call with Trump, but he stressed: ‘It’s crazy when things go on social media, how fast they go. I would never say anything like that.’
During his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, Trump announced that the USA women’s team will still be visiting the White House at a later date despite rejecting his first invitation.
‘They beat a fantastic Canadian team in overtime, as everybody saw. As did the American women who will soon be coming to the White House,’ he told Congress.