"I hit with my right shoulder. Ninety-nine percent of my hits in the NHL are with my right shoulder. So I thought he was going to come up. I'm not sure on what hit he got hurt either. Like when he went after me again, I kind of hit him. Or maybe when I played the puck, I hit him with the puck. We don't know. I'm not going to speculate on that. It was just routine."
"I didn't really want to hit him. I wanted to provide him to take the middle. I just stood there. You can see on the video that I hit him with my chest. There really wasn't any intention to hurt him or anything like this. Just play hard against the top players on the other team. That's my job."
Auston Matthews left Tuesday night's game after a hit from behind by Nikita Zadorov that sent Matthews head-first into the boards and caused a lower-body injury. Zadorov was not penalized on the play. Max Domi attempted to fight Zadorov after the hit, but Zadorov declined to engage. Leafs coach Craig Berube criticized the officiating and said the hit should have been a penalty. Zadorov said the hit had no malicious intent, calling it a normal, routine play and asserting he struck with his chest/right shoulder while trying to play the top opposing players hard.
Read at Editor In Leaf
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