Malkin ejected for viciously swinging his stick at Raffl’s head

In case you missed it, Pittsburgh Penguins superstar Evgeni Malkin was ejected from last night’s game against the Philadelphia Flyers after he viciously swung his stick at the head of Flyers forward Michael Raffl.

Thankfully, Malkin did not make contact with Raffl, at least not solidly, but just because of the sheer recklessness of the play and because Malkin’s intent was clearly to injure, he was handed a 10 minute misconduct and ejected from the game. He’ll have a hearing with NHL Player Safety later today to decide his punishment. 

Here’s the play in question:

Here it is slowed down and from a different angle:

Yikes… no matter which was you look at it that is a DIRTY play.

The Penguins held on to win despite being down Malkin for the rest of the game but you know what… they should consider themselves lucky that Malkin’s stick didn’t end up making contact with Raffl’s head, otherwise they’d have him out of the lineup a lot longer. 

After the game Malkin didn’t seem to shy away from the fact that what he did was dirty, but he defended his actions saying no one was hurt.

“I’m not trying to hit his face. … I know it's dirty, but I missed,” Malkin said. “He just like dived and the referee give me five minutes. [He wasn’t] injured, not bleeding, nothing.”

Head coach Mike Sullivan also came to Malkin’s defense saying, “I just think on Geno’s part it was reactionary. He was getting punched in the back of the head [by Raffl]. It was a battle between the two of them and I think it was reactionary,” Sullivan said. “I was a little surprised it was a match because the player didn’t get hurt on it or there wasn’t real significant contact. But that’s now how the referee saw it.”