Ducks’ F Corey Perry Leaves Game After Crushing Hit

Anaheim Ducks star forward Corey Perry left last night’s game against the Minnesota Wild after hard hip-check from Wild defenseman Keith Ballard.

I could begin this with ‘it couldn’t of happened to a nicer guy’, but I feel that would be inappropriate, right?

Okay, so I won’t. Although, I kinda just did. Whatever.

In all seriousness, you never want to see anyone hurt no matter who it is, but that’s what happened to Anaheim Ducks‘ star forward Corey Perry during the first period of Friday night’s game against the Minnesota Wild at Xcel Energy Center. How serious the injury is is yet to be seen.

Perry was skating with the puck with a bit of speed into the Wild end along the boards and tried to slip past Wild defender Keith Ballard along the boards. Instead, Ballard hit Perry with a low hip check that sent the Ducks’ forward up-ending into the air. The hit caught Perry in an awkward position and seemed to make contact directly on his right knee. Perry stayed down on the ice for awhile and needed to be helped off the ice and into the locker room for evaluation.

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The Ducks would not get Perry back for the remainder of the game, but they were able to hold on without their star forward and defeat the Wild 5-4.

There has been a lot of debate since the hit happened on whether this was a dirty hit or not. Some say it was a clean hit with an unfortunate result, and others are saying it was a completely dirty hit on Ballard’s part. Ballard is known for using that Rob Blake-like hip check when he gets the chance, so it was nothing knew for Ballard to do.

You also have to take into consideration that Ballard is much smaller than Perry (Ballard is 5’11”, Perry is 6’3″). So, right away Ballard is going to be a bit lower on Perry if he’s going for a hit, but Ballard did seem to crouch down a bit lower than usual.

In my humble opinion, I feel it was a good hit that just caught Corey Perry in an awkward position. That said, I wish Perry a speedy recovery. The Anaheim Ducks and the NHL need a player of his caliber active.