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Mathieu Perreault gets crushed by a massive open ice hit from Dale Weise.

Mathieu Perreault gets crushed by a massive open ice hit from Dale Weise.

Great, clean, hit.

HockeyFeed

HockeyFeed

This was one hell of a hit, and the best part about it was that it was absolutely legal.

On Sunday the Winnipeg Jets welcomed the Philadelphia Flyers to the MTS Center in Winnipeg, Manitoba and it was more or less all Jets all the time. Now to be fair to the Flyers there were coming off the heels of a huge win against a much improved Buffalo Sabres team just the day before but nonetheless the Jets really made it look like it was a contending team taking on a pretending team. 

The Jets would go on to win the game by a score of 7 - 1 but that does not mean that the night was without highlights for the Philadelphia Flyers. In the final half of the game's 3rd period came arguably the Flyers biggest moment of the night when Dale Weise of all players leveled Jets forward Mathieu Perreault with a huge open ice hit that left Perreault looking like he was in a world of hurt on the ice. 

Perreault made the classic mistake of attempting to cut across the blue line on an odd man rush and as he slowed his momentum that gave Weise all the time he needed to line him up and crush him with a textbook body check. There was no head contact on the initial hit from Weise, although to be fair to Perreault here he did smack his head against the leg of Philadelphia's Scott Laughton after he went sailing through the air as a result of the impact from Weise. Obviously Laughton in no way did this deliberately and the boomerang effect it produce for Perreault's body was merely a case of bad luck. 

After the hit Perreault laid down on the ice for what seemed like several long moments and based on his body language it looked as if he had the wind badly knocked out of him on the hit. Given that Perreault's ribs and torso seemed to absorb a significant portion of the impact that would seem to line up with him gasping for breath while down on the ice. 

Thankfully Jets head coach Paul Maurice did say after the game that he believes Perreault is going to be just fine.

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