Jets' Josh Morrissey comes back to play just 11 minutes after taking a puck directly to the face.
Jets' Josh Morrissey comes back to play just 11 minutes after taking a puck directly to the face.
Hockey players are built different.
That age-old mantra was on full-display from Canada Life Centre on Monday night.
Despite the Winnipeg Jets' overtime loss to the visiting Montreal Canadiens, fans were treated to a back-and-forth comeback effort that fell just short in the extra frame.
In a battle of the Barron brothers of Halifax, N.S., the elder of the two could only look on in disgust as his brother scored the overtime winner with 3:51 left in the extra frame.
But a bigger story was that of the injury suffered to Jets star defenceman Josh Morrissey just one minute into the third period.
The team's top blueliner took a Nick Suzuki wrist shot straight to the face on a rush up-ice. He immediately flung off his gloves and grabbed at his cheek as he rushed off the ice and down the Jets' tunnel.
“You hate to see that," goaltender Connor Hellebuyck said postgame. "You never want to see that happen, especially to a guy like that who plays a lot of minutes and is a huge part of this team. You just hate to see that.”
Miraculously, after just 11 minutes of game-time, or 17 minutes real-time, Morrissey re-emerged on the Jets' bench, took a quick twirl on the ice and then finished the game with his regular defence partner, Dylan DeMelo.
With the Jets' training staff working wonders to stop the bleeding and patch up the blueliner, Morrissey took to the ice with what undoubtedly will become a monstrous goose-egg.
Inflating to the size of a golf ball, the defender didn't even bother throwing a cage or full facial shield onto his helmet, but rather toughed it out for the remaining 10 minutes of action with his standard half-visor.
“I just know that it’s going to be pretty swollen tomorrow," said head coach Rick Bowness. "There’s a pretty good chance he’s going to have a good shiner. But give him full marks for coming back. He’s a tremendous competitor.”
Morrissey ended up finishing the game with 22:29 of ice time, just shy of his partner and team leader DeMelo's 25:41.
"Luckily it could have been worse, some stitches and a little bit of pain," forward Cole Perfetti said. "Kudos to him for coming back, you know trying to battle the rest of the way. Obviously it was scary, you hate to see that to anyone. Just grateful that he's alright."
With some added colour expected over the next week, Morrissey will be thankful to have only missed a couple minutes of game-time thanks to what could have been an extremely frightening situation, should the puck have caught him just a few inches higher.
"It could have been a lot worse," Perfetti added.
"You know, a lot of scary things can happen when the puck is travelling that fast and it hits a guy in the jaw or face and you don't really know where it hits him. You see that reaction and you see the immediate, your stomach sinks a little bit and you're just praying he's ok. You know luckily he's in some pain and some stitches but I think all thing's considered he'll be okay; it was pretty fortunate that that was it."