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Byfuglien knocks Archibald into next week with perhaps  the biggest hits of the season.
 

Byfuglien knocks Archibald into next week with perhaps the biggest hits of the season.

Monster hit from Byfuglien.

HockeyFeed

HockeyFeed

The good news for 26 year old Arizona Coyotes forward Josh Archiblad is that he probably will have little to no memory of the freight train that collided with him tonight.

The Coyotes were facing off against the Winnipeg Jets on Saturday in a match up that did not have a great deal of hype around it, largely due to the fact that the Coyotes have gotten off to yet another poor start. The game itself was decent with both teams picking up a goal a piece by the time we had reached the halfway mark of the game, but it will be a hit from Winnipeg Jets defenseman Dustin Byfuglien that will be on all the highlight reels later tonight and perhaps tomorrow morning as well. 

The game was all tied up at 1 - 1 with roughly 11 minutes left on the game clock during the match up's second period when the Coyotes began to mount another offensive attack, an attack that was completely stuffed by the powerful Jets defenseman. After the Coyotes had gained entry into the Jets defensive zone it was Archibald who won a race for the puck in the corner boards and as a result he was the first on the puck. Unfortunately the second man to get there was big bad Dustin Byfuglien and he made Archibald pay for his hard work with what may be the most devastating hit of the season thus far. 

The good news for Archibald is that based on the slow motion replay he had the chance to see Byfuglien coming at the very last second and he managed to turn his shoulder and brace himself for the tremendous impact coming his way. Unfortunately for Archiblad it is unclear how much good that did him because the end result was complete and utter devastation. Byfuglien ran right through him as if he was not even there and the impact of the hit sent Archibald hard into the boards and left him down on the ice.

Archibald began to look around while down on the ice as if he didn't realize what had just hit him, and when he regained his feet it became painfully obvious that his brain and definitely been rattled on the play. As Archibald tried to skate back to the Arizona Coyotes bench he was doing his best Bambi impersonation, struggling to maintain any semblance of balance on his skates. Archibald seemed to be aware enough of what was going on as he began to skate but his legs where two spaghetti noodles under him and did not appear to be interested in cooperating with him. 

Unsurprisingly when the play was eventually stopped Archibald was not allowed to remain in the game and was quickly escorted off the ice and to the locker room by the Coyotes training staff. Hopefully once back in the locker room he was put through the concussion protocol, as this appears to have been a textbook example of a player getting seriously rocked by what appears to have been a clean hit. 

Check out the video replay and judge for yourselves.

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