Johnny Boychuk is one tough dude.
The New York Islanders defenseman — and former Boston Bruin — took a skate blade to the neck Thursday night during a game against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Boychuk came very close to suffering a serious injury. But amazingly, he returned to the bench for the third period and ended up logging additional ice time for the Islanders.
“Thank the Lord on that,” Islanders coach Barry Trotz told reporters after the game, per Newsday. “That could’ve been a very ugly scene. He got a little bit of a scratch right there. But you talk about a life, you never know. Like a game, it’s a matter of inches. This one was not even inches. This was a matter of milli-inches. I think it’s very sobering for him. You see Johnny’s face, he’s pretty white right now. He realizes how close he comes to maybe something serious.”
We see these skate blade injuries every so often, and some have been a lot worse than what Boychuk dealt with Thursday. The most infamous of these injuries, of course, involved Buffalo Sabres goalie Clint Malarchuk having his carotid artery sliced in 1989.
