Mark Borowiecki facing suspension for season-ending injury to Dmitrij Jaškin.

The Nashville Predators may lose veteran defenseman Mark Borowiecki for a considerable length of time, especially given some of the news that has come out today.

On Saturday, Borowiecki and the Predators took on the Arizona Coyotes and it was during the very first period of that game that Borowiecki was involved in a nasty collision with Coyotes forward Dmitrij Jaškin. Jaškin had just picked up the puck in the neutral zone and was looking to skate it up the ice, and it was then that Borowiecki saw what he thought was an opportunity to deliver a big hit.

Jaškin appeared to see the contact coming however and quickly adjusted his position to avoid the contact from Borowiecki. Unfortunately for Jaškin that adjustment was not enough to get him out of the way of Borowiecki entirely, and instead the two men went knee on knee. The impact in the neutral zone was a violent one and it was immediately apparent that Jaškin had taken the worst of the blow.

The most disturbing part of this incident however was not the hit itself, but rather what came after it. Rarely have I seen a player in genuine agony the way Jaškin was following the knee on knee. The Coyotes forward is a veteran of over 300 games but he appeared to be almost in shock at the amount of pain he was enduring in the moment. Jaškin could be seen writhing in pain on the ice for several long and uncomfortable moments and even after the live feed cut and went to a commercial break, he remained down on the ice unable to get up under his own power as the Coyotes training staff attended to him.

The National Hockey League's Department of Player Safety has announced that Borowiecki will have a hearing today for the knee on knee that was delivered to Jaškin. It is worth noting that the hearing will not be an in person hearing, which would appear to indicate that if Borowiecki is indeed hit with a suspension it will be a relatively short one. 

There is another significant factor to this story however and in this case the news is very bad for the Predators defenseman. Coyotes insider Craig Morgan is now reporting that it is looking like Jaškin has suffered a major injury, so much so that he is expected to miss the remainder of the 2021 - 2022 National Hockey League season. The league has repeatedly shown that the severity of an injury that comes as a result of a violation of their rules results in a harsher punishment for the player, and there aren't many injuries more serious than the kind that end a season this early on.

Now we wait and see how the league will rule on this, and we all know that when it comes to the Department of Player Safety your guess is as good as mine.