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Brady Tkachuk, captain of the Ottawa Senators, came perilously close to a broken nose during his NHL comeback after clinching Olympic gold with Team USA in Milan.
During Thursday’s match against the Detroit Red Wings in Ottawa, Tkachuk was blindsided by a hard hit from Simon Edvinsson, a towering Swedish defenseman standing at 6 feet 6 inches.
As Tkachuk focused on a high-flying puck, Edvinsson’s collision caused Tkachuk’s own stick to rebound into his face, nearly fracturing his nose. He quickly fell to the ice, prompting his teammate Dylan Cozens to engage Edvinsson in a fight.
The tension continued as Tkachuk and Edvinsson exchanged words from their penalty boxes, pointing at the scoreboard replay of the hit.
Detroit sealed their victory in overtime with a goal from Dylan Larkin, who also played alongside Tkachuk on Team USA.
Facing the visiting Detroit Red Wings in Canada’s capital on Thursday, Tkachuk was on the receiving end of a brutal blindside hit from 6ft6 Swedish defenseman Simon Edvinsson
Head athletic therapist Domenic Nicoletta of the Ottawa Senators assists Brady Tkachuk
Simon Edvinsson of the Detroit Red Wings fights Dylan Cozens after the hit on TkachukÂ
Senators spokespeople did not respond to the Daily Mail’s request for an update on Tkachuk. Â
Thursday’s loss came after Tkahcuk criticized the White House over an AI social media video.
After winning gold against the rival Canadians, Tkachuk and 19 other members of Team USA visited Trump at the White House before watching State of the Union speech on Tuesday night.
But since then, the White House released a misleading AI clip on TikTok in which Tkachuk appeared to criticize Canadians.
‘They booed our national anthem, so I had to come out and teach those maple-syrup-eating f***s a lesson,’ Tkachuk said in the altered clip which had more than 11 million views on TikTok.Â
Tkachuk responded to the clip ahead of Thursday’s game.
‘Well, it’s clearly fake, because it’s not my voice, not my lips moving,’ Tkachuk said Thursday. ‘I’m not in control of any of those accounts. I know that those words would never come out of my mouth. So, I can’t do anything about it.’
USA hockey star Brady Tkachuk has fumed over an AI-edited video posted by the White House
When asked if he enjoyed the video, he added: ‘It’s not my voice. It’s not what I was saying.
‘I would never say that. That’s not who I am, so I guess I don’t like that video because that would never come out of my mouth and never had that thought.’
Trump also sparked controversy after footage of his phone call with the victorious men’s team surfaced on social media.
While congratulating them on winning gold, the President joked that he was also ‘going to have to bring the women’s team’ to Washington after they also beat Canada in the final.
Trump then added that he ‘probably would be impeached’ if he didn’t extend the invitation to America’s female hockey champions.
The women’s team subsequently turned down Trump’s invitation due to ‘scheduled academic and professional commitments following the Games.’
And Tkachuk said he understood why they could have felt insulted by his locker-room joke, which some have labeled misogynistic.
‘I mean, I get it,’ he said before detailing the positive relationship between the men’s and women’s teams. ‘We support them, they support us. You can’t control what other people say. It was fun being around them, seeing how they play and the excellence around them.
‘If I see one of them, we’ll talk about the excitement of what we can control, which is to be gold medalists.’
Tkachuk was also accused by some of shouting ‘Close the northern border!’ during the congratulatory call with Trump, but he stressed: ‘It’s crazy when things go on social media, how fast they go. I would never say anything like that.’
During his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, Trump announced that the USA women’s team will still be visiting the White House at a later date despite rejecting his first invitation.
‘They beat a fantastic Canadian team in overtime, as everybody saw. As did the American women who will soon be coming to the White House,’ he told Congress.