NHL prospect receives 13 game suspension for attacking an official.

A promising young National Hockey League prospect has just been hit with a massive ban.

According to an official announcement from the Kontinental Hockey League 20 year old NHL hopeful Artur Kayumov has been slapped with a 13 game suspension in part for his hit on an opposing player and as well as for striking a KHL official on the ice.

The incident occurred during a match up between Jokerit Helsinki, which is why the commentary you are going to hear in the video replay is in Finnish, and Yaroslavl Lokomotiv of the Kontinental Hockey League and at the center of it all were two once highly touted NHL prospects. Being victimized on the play was former Vancover Canucks 1st round draft selection (29th overall) in the 2011 NHL Entry Draft Nicklas Jensen who was playing for Jokerit at the time while the man delivering the blows was former Chicago Blackhawks 2nd round draft pick (50th overall) in the 2016 NHL Entry Draft Artur Kayumov playing for Lokomotiv. 

There's no question that Kayumov, the only one of these two players who still seems to have a clear path to the NHL, was the aggressor on this play as the entire incident began due to a nasty looking hit to Jensen's head. Now in defense of Kayumov, although his actions later in this incident don't really make you want to give hi the benefit of the doubt, when he delivered the hit to Jensen the 25 year old winger appeared to be losing his balance and was perhaps even in the process of falling which may have drastically changed the angle of impact. Nonetheless the end result was Kayumov delivering a crushing hit directly to Jensen's head, pancaking it between his body and the boards and leaving the former 1st round pick in a great deal of pain down on the ice. 

The hit itself sparked an altercation between the players on both sides of the ice, and that is when things truly got crazy and went well over the line of reasonable conduct. As the players were exchanging some pushes and shoves, no one actually dropped the gloves here in spite of the ugly looking hit, the KHL officials swooped in and attempted to diffuse the situation by separating the players from one another. Kayumov had not had enough however and instead he decided to sucker punch one of the on ice officials directly in the face with a pretty solid looking swing. You can see in the second replay that he clearly connects with the punch, and it doesn't seem to me like there was a player all that close to the referee at the time that he may have been aiming at instead.

Kayumov will receive 4 games for the hit, 8 games for his attack on the official, and an additional automatic 1 game suspension that was triggered by his actions on the day of the incident. That brings the grand total to 13 games, although who knows how badly this will damage his reputation in the hockey world.

[pub]