Brad Marchand takes out an NHL official after a big hit.

The last thing notorious Boston Bruins agitator Brad Marchand needed was to give the officials in the National Hockey League one more reason to call every little thing against him.

On Sunday night Marchand was the victim of some unfortunate circumstances when he accidentally took out of the NHL's officials after being the victim of a big hit himself, one that could heave easily resulted in an injury to Marchand as well. The Bruins were visiting the Ottawa Senators at the Canadian Tire Center and it was a close, if low scoring affair, the whole way through. The Bruins would eventually break the 1 - 1 tie by scoring in the overtime frame but the incident with Marchand occurred almost exactly midway through the game's 3rd period.

Marchand and the Bruins were on the rush into the Ottawa zone when the puck suddenly got loose and Marchand quickly, and deftly, recovered it for his team. Marchand then proceeded to make his way down to the left side of the Senators net and it was at that moment that Senators winger Ryan Dzingel showed up to level Marchand from behind. Thankfully the Bruins forward was far enough away from the boards at the time that he was able to avoid the worst of it, but that didn't prevent him from crashing hard into the boards as a result of the hard shove from behind courtest of Dzingel.

Unfortunately for referee Chris Schlenker he was standing at the exact spot along the boards that Marchand would end up crashing into, and the result was the side of Marchand's body taking out Schlenker's legs and crushing them hard against the boards as he went full speed into them. It's not hard to imagine how that could hurt quite badly and when the replay was shown on the big screen in Ottawa you could hear an audible gasp from the crowd as they reacted to the play. 

It looked like Schlenker hurt his knee on the play but to his credit he shook it off and would remain in the game following the big impact. Even the referees in hockey appear to be made of tougher stuff.

[pub]