Sidney Crosby Goes Down After Getting A Karate Chop To The Face From A Linesman.

When you've had a career as illustrious and as long as the one Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby has had in the National Hockey League, you're bound to end up with a few moments on the blooper reel.

On Saturday night Crosby most definitely added one of those when he had a rather unfortunate encounter with linesman Travis Gawryletz. That encounter would occur in the opening minutes of the very first period of Saturday night's game between the Penguins and the Nashville Predators when Crosby skated straight into Gawryletz's outstretched arm.

Crosby was simply gliding along the ice and his trajectory would have taken him safely past Gawryletz, but fate had other plans. Right as Crosby skated up to the linesman, Gawryletz threw his arms out to the side in what ended up being a karate chop-like motion right into Crosby's unsuspecting face.

The chop caught Crosby completely off-guard and unsurprisingly knocked him down to the ice, but thankfully no one was seriously injured as a result of the incident. Crosby to his credit didn't seem to blame Gawryletz at all and just skated back to the Penguins bench after a brief conversation with the linesman to tend to his face.