A KHL official had to be stretchered off during a game between Avtomobilist and Amur, and at least one longtime hockey watcher had never seen anything like it.
Jeremy Garrett of Hockey News Hub shared the clip, saying it was the first time he had seen an official taken off on a stretcher.
The scoreboard showed a scoreless game with 1:12 on the first-period clock, and Avtomobilist held an 8-6 edge in shots.
In the clip, an official stands in the middle of a crowd of red and white sweaters along the boards, sticks moving around him and a loose puck at his feet.
The post didn't explain what happened to him, and there was no update on his condition attached to it.
Officials take real risks every night and almost never get credit for it. This is the side of the job nobody in the stands thinks about.
It's the stagehand getting caught under the set during a scene change. Nobody watches the crew until something goes wrong.
-
Officials keep finding themselves in the middle of the action this week
How is he doing? That's the only question that matters right now, and nobody has answered it publicly in the posts that circulated.
The clip carries the KHL's regular-season 2026/27 graphic, and it had been viewed 48K times within nine hours.
Behind the play, the Amur goaltender crouches in his crease with a tiger on his mask, while Avtomobilist's No. 21 battles at the edge of the blue paint.
It hasn't been a quiet week for officials in North America either.
On Thursday in New York, a linesman got caught in Alberts Smits' heavy check on Erik Cernak along the Tampa Bay bench, and Gino Hard said the official got the worst of it.
That clip didn't show what happened to that linesman afterward either.
Officials skate in the same traffic as everyone else, and there's nowhere to hide when a play collapses toward them.
Every league hopes the next update on a moment like this is a good one. Until there is one, the hockey world is left waiting on a man in stripes.
Should the KHL and NHL do more to protect on-ice officials?
Also read on Markerzone.com:
Special scene in the Jets locker room involving Scott Arniel and rookie Tyrel Bauer
