Malenstyn Hit Knocks Cernak Out of Lightning Win and Draws No Penalty

Erik Cernak went into the boards at the worst spot on the rink, his head found the glass where it bends around the end of the bench, and he did not come back. The Tampa Bay Lightning still won 8-3 in Buffalo on Wednesday night, but the game turned on a second-period hit that injured a defenceman with a history of concussions and drew no penalty at all. The only player punished for the incident was a Lightning forward who went after the hitter.

What happened to Erik Cernak?

A routine check became a scary one because of where it happened. Just over a minute after Yanni Gourde’s goal at 13:02 of the second period, Buffalo forward Beck Malenstyn checked Cernak in front of the Lightning bench, the Lightning’s own site reports. Cernak’s head hit the glass where it bends around the end of the bench, and he was injured on the play. Raw Charge describes the same sequence: Malenstyn rode Cernak into the boards and the big defenceman’s upper body made contact with the stanchion at the end of the bench, and Cernak was left lying prone on the ice. He did not return to the game. Cernak had already been to the box for tripping earlier in the night, so it was a difficult evening before the hit, and it ended in the locker room. Tampa Bay also finished the game without Anthony Cirelli, who joined Cernak in the locker room late on.

Why was there no penalty on Malenstyn?

Because the officials saw a check and nothing more. No penalty was called on Malenstyn for the hit, even as Cernak stayed down and then left the game. The response came from the Lightning players, not the officials: Ilya Mikheyev went straight after Malenstyn, and Mikheyev was the one assessed a roughing minor. Buffalo then scored on the ensuing power play, with Josh Doan redirecting a Ryan McLeod pass with 12 seconds left on the penalty. So the sequence reads backwards. The hit that injured a player drew nothing, and the retaliation drew the only call. The desk has seen this shape before: Oliver Ekman-Larsson left a game on a Lauzon hit that also drew no penalty, and the question in both cases is the same, whether the officials judged the contact legal and the injury incidental, or whether they simply missed the dangerous part of it.

How bad is the injury?

Bad enough to cost him Thursday, with the rest unknown. Pro Hockey Rumors reports Cernak suffered an upper-body injury, and notes it was a scary injury for a defender with a history of concussions. Lightning coach Jon Cooper told reporters, including NHL.com’s Benjamin Pierce, that Cernak will likely sit out Thursday’s game against the Columbus Blue Jackets, and that absence should move Maxwell Crozier back into the lineup. The team has given no diagnosis and no return date. That is the honest position for now: a head hitting a stanchion is the kind of impact that takes days to assess, and a player with Cernak’s history does not get rushed back on a back-to-back. The Lightning complete the back-to-back in Columbus on Thursday, so the decision will be made quickly either way.

What did the Lightning do after the hit?

They answered it on the ice, and then they answered it on the scoreboard. The Mikheyev roughing minor was the immediate response, and it cost them a goal. The longer response was the third period, when the Lightning turned a game Buffalo had been tilting into a rout. Nikita Kucherov scored a natural hat trick in the third, John Carlson recorded his first five-point game and reached 800 career points, and Jake Guentzel posted his first four-assist game. Sam O’Reilly picked up his first NHL point with an assist on Gourde’s goal, and the Lightning scored a season-high eight goals on just 22 shots. The win moved Tampa Bay to 12-4-2, Gino Hard reports. None of that changes the Cernak picture, but it explains why the hit did not decide the game: Buffalo out-attempted Tampa Bay 44-19 over the final 40 minutes and still lost by five, because the Lightning finished everything.

How does this fit the league’s discipline pattern?

It sits in the grey area the league keeps creating. A hit with no on-ice penalty can still draw supplemental discipline, but the Department of Player Safety has said nothing about this one and no hearing has been announced. The contrast cases are all recent. Frank Nazar got a match penalty and a two-game suspension for a high hit on Bo Horvat, and Anthony Mantha’s boarding major on Niklas Matinpalo knocked the Ottawa defenceman out with no hearing announced. Jakob Chychrun’s hit left Nick Cousins unconscious and drew a major that was then erased. The Malenstyn hit is the fourth shape: an injury, a prone player, and no call at all, on the ice or after it. The league’s silence is itself the decision so far, and it will look worse if Cernak misses more than Thursday.

What happens next?

Thursday in Columbus, without Cernak in all likelihood, and then the wait for a diagnosis. The watch items are whether the Lightning give Cernak’s injury a name and a timeline, whether Player Safety says anything about a hit that drew no penalty, and whether Crozier holds the second pair while Cernak is out. The hit is the story, but the stanchion is the detail that will keep it alive: the bend in the glass at the end of the bench is the one place on the boards where a check can turn a shoulder into a head injury, and on Wednesday it did exactly that.