May 21: Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe told reporters including Chris Johnston of Sportsnet after the game that Tavares is “conscious and communicating well” but will spend the night in hospital for further testing. An update came from the team in the morning when the veteran forward was discharged from hospital:
Toronto Maple Leafs captain John Tavares has been discharged from the hospital this morning. He was thoroughly examined and assessed by the neursurgical team at St. Michael’s Hospital and the club’s medical director. He was kept overnight for observation and is now resting at home under the care and supervision of team physicians. Tavares will be out indefinitely.
May 20: The long-awaited postseason reunion of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal Canadiens got off to a start that no one hoped to see. Maple Leafs captain John Tavares was forced from Game One on Thursday night just over ten minutes into the game following a serious head injury. Tavares required the use of a stretcher to leave the ice. He has been taken to a local hospital. There has been no further update as to his condition.
Tavares’ injury, while horrific, was completely unintentional. The Leafs star was checked by Montreal Canadiens defenseman Ben Chiarot while in transition. Montreal’s Corey Perry, following the play at full speed, skated by Tavares just as he fell to the ice. Perry’s knee struck Tavares directly in the head, launching the Hab into the air and knocking the Leaf to the ice. Toronto’s medical staff attempted to help Tavares from his prone position up to his knees, but he could not maintain his balance and fell back to the ice in a scary display of the immediate aftermath of a violent collision. The decision was made to bring the stretcher out in order to get Tavares off the ice. The captain was able to signal with a thumbs up as he exited, but this will not eliminate the fear and concern surrounding his condition.
Tavares, 30, is unlikely to return to the ice any time soon for the Maple Leafs, if at all this postseason following what was obviously a major head injury. It is a huge loss for the team, both on the ice and in the locker room. Tavares played in all 56 games for the Leafs this season, recording 50 points along the way. The anchor of the Leafs’ second line and a key piece of the top power play unit, Tavares was third on the team in scoring and second in assists. He is also Toronto’s top face-off man, enjoying a second consecutive season with career-best success at the dot with a 55.3% FOW. Tavares, of course, is also a locker room presence and an important part of the Leafs’ leadership group. Toronto will have to regroup and refocus in order to make sure that they don’t let Tavares’ loss, no matter how shocking it was to watch, cost them their first-round series.
Everyone at PHR wishes Tavares and his family the best during this frightening time.
Scary video. Best wishes to 91.
I’ve never been more scared for a player in my life then when he initially tried to get up and fell backwards clutching his throat and Looked like he started to seize. I doubt we’ll see him in games for a while but I’m okay with that as long as jt is okay
Not to downplay his injury, because obviously it’s scary, but how can you find that scarier than the Malarchuk incident? That was like a horror movie, he had the look of death in his face.
Quick recovery JT…but honest miscue by Perry and so he had to answer the bell…where is this league going..
That was pretty gruesome to watch. The play-by-play guys on the NHLN telecast said that the Toronto bench felt Perry had some intent while showing Keefe and some of the bench screaming at the referee. I don’t get it, how can you think there was intent there? No way Perry meant to do that.
Talking further of your last comment, it is weird how you have to answer the bell even for legal checks or things that are clearly accidental. I’m not sure what statement they thought they were making there except to show how silly they can be when they try to determine whether something was intentional or not. You can be sure that if it was Tavares accidentally kneeing Perry in the face in the same circumstances, Toronto would think it’s an accident and the Montreal bench would be yelling and screaming about intent trying to get a penalty.
Maybe this is reflective of a larger problem. Do they really think it was intentional or are they just trying to benefit themselves by trying to pretend it was? Trying to get a penalty or ejection out of it? It must be hard being part of the DOPS and having to ignore all this nonsense to try to get to the truth of the matter when people are screaming emotional bias at you all over the place to do this or that. If we can’t tell the difference between accident and intent, that’s a big problem.
I hope they didn’t really think Perry had intent. It will be interesting to hear Keefe’s comments on it after the game. As I type this, Simmonds is going after Perry. Maybe they really did think there was intent.
Perry has a reputation, one well earned. If it had been another player, many would just assume it was accidental. We reap what we sow.
Irrelevant. It doesn’t make something that’s clearly an accident all of a sudden intentional because of something he did a year ago or whatever. Are you suggesting it’s reasonable to think Perry intentionally hit Tavares in the face with his knee on that play because “he has a reputation?” We can all see the replay.
Great point. He does have that reputation.
@sessh If you are a player on the ice who has ‘experienced’ Perry, you might feel very differently.We have the luxury to sit comfortably in our loungers watching replays and listening to pundits.
That’s true, but I assume that everyone sees the replay on the overhead TV screens in the arena, though. The players are always looking up there after something happens. Either that or they are looking at iPads or TV’s in the floor of the bench area. In this era of instant video, those guys see everything right away or soon after.
I get the emotional reaction of seeing your captain and friend laid out on the ice. I only hope that they realize in this instance, there was no intent. Perry appeared to be almost in tears at one point before Tavares was taken off and didn’t even try to throw a punch in the fight with Foligno.
When you’re competing with great intensity and focus, it’s not easy to shrug off a teammate getting pulverized and carried off on a stretcher and say, “must have been an accident; let’s shrug it off and give them a pass on this.”
No, you want someone to blame, to gather a reason to fire up and punish your opponent. Even if they deep down knew it was an accident, they aren’t going up to Perry to say it’s not his fault and let’s have fun out there. They are going to call him every name in the book. They are going to work the refs to try to get an advantage on penalty calls. They try to focus on winning the game with any edge they can gain while trying not to feel sick about one of their leaders perhaps being gone for the rest of the playoffs or beyond. They aren’t saying, “let’s just forget about it, he didn’t mean to do it.”
You have to protect your stars. Toronto as a reputation of not being tough. They are try to change that. I think it was an accident. But even an accident has to punished. Otherwise what is to stop someone lining up Mathews and trying to take him out of the series / playoffs.
I can do commentary on the NHL network…Jesus Christ Superstar…
It’s a mirror broadcast of the SN feed, so it’s not NHLN commentators. I just happen to be watching it there. What are you trying to say besides attacking the quality of SN’s play-by-play? The Leafs didn’t think it was intentional? The reaction of the Toronto bench afterwards and continuing to go after Perry seems to indicate that Toronto didn’t think it was without intent.
Jesus you seem dense. He’s saying the nhl network is terrible
It’s SN’s broadcasters, not NHLN so the comment makes no sense. What part of “it’s a mirrored broadcast” didn’t you understand? You’re diving right into name calling and personal attacks? Get a grip.
Look, the point is that if I say ‘I heard so and so on the telecast” and someone replies with “that network sucks”, the implication is that whatever I heard on the telecast is undermined by the lack of credibility of the network broadcasting the game and therefore, what I heard on there is false. I’m not sure what’s “dense” about that, but whatever.
If the comment was nothing more than a superficial dig at the network (which I assume it wasn’t because I kind of expect higher level discourse here than that, name calling and personal attacks included) with no deeper meaning, why comment at all? This is supposed to be about the incident between Perry and Tavares, not taking cheap shots at networks airing mirrored broadcasts with no other intention or contribution to the discussion.
At any rate, this is going to be a great series and I hope Tavares isn’t hurt badly. Man was that a nasty impact.
This made me think of when thought chara had killed Pacioretty or malarchuk bleeding from neck.
Reminds me of when Berard took a stick to the eye. Like you just witnessed a career ending injury that looks sickening but almost inevitable that it would happen to someone.
Guys it’s alright I mistaking took the NHLN as something else I am not putting anyone down on Sportsnet feed…I truly believe Kevin Bieksa when he says there is no intent in that play…Its like riding a bike and then all of a sudden you clip the curb you didn’t see…you are going to hit it and then go tits over kettle. The must we really want to see is JT back soon but I don’t know….