So, yeah. That's what Matt Hendricks' ear looked like last weekend. Split in half. Bleeding profusely. Hanging onto the side of his head for dear life. Yeeeeeeeck! How'd it happen? Well, it appears that the Capitals forward was the victim of an errant shot by the team's star Alexander Ovechkin, who accidentally caught him with a puck to the side of the dome during a practice in Pittsburgh on Saturday.
"We were in groups," Hendricks said a few days after the incident. "There's a group taking some shots at one end, and we were out by the blue line working on our face-offs. [Ovechkin] took a shot and missed the net a little high. It hit the glass and came out. We all know how hard he shoots; it ended up catching me in the ear. It wasn't direct, but from what he says, it was picking up speed on the glass."
And how did that feel? "It hit me and it was kind of surprising," he said. "It felt like somebody came up and hit me in the head with a baseball bat. It stunned me. I realized I was bleeding and pain was setting in. I knew it wasn't good. I was pretty upset. I was thinking of all the worst possible injuries I could have had and I was hoping that it wasn't going to be that bad."
Unfortunately for him, it was! But thanks to a shitload of Novacaine and a plastic surgeon, he was able to get things right again. He even played in a game less than 24 hours later. But it's safe to say that the accident still deserves a slot on our list of the most gruesome sports injuries of all time. Ew.
[via Dump 'n Chase]
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