Frank Nazar Gets a Match Penalty for a High Hit on Bo Horvat as the Islanders Captain Is Evaluated

Frank Nazar scored the goal that gave Chicago hope and then, about a minute later, took the penalty that ended his night. The Blackhawks forward received a match penalty on Thursday for a shoulder to the head of Islanders captain Bo Horvat, Sportsnet reports, on the empty-net goal that sealed New York’s 4-1 win at UBS Arena. Horvat was still being evaluated after the game, most likely for a concussion, coach Pete DeBoer said.

What happened on the play?

The game was effectively over when it happened. With less than two minutes left, the Islanders leading 3-1 and Chicago’s net empty, Horvat collected the puck in his own end after a blocked shot and fired it the length of the ice into the empty net, Sportsnet reports. Just after Horvat released the puck, Nazar caught him up high with a shoulder to the head area.

The response was instant. A scrum formed, Jean-Gabriel Pageau went after Tyler Bertuzzi, and Bertuzzi and Logan Stanley received 10-minute misconducts alongside Nazar’s match penalty, Sportsnet and Lighthouse Hockey report. Horvat, whose empty-netter was his second goal of the night, went to the dressing room for evaluation instead of finishing the game he had just decided.

Why does a match penalty matter more than a major?

Because of what the call itself alleges. A match penalty is the officials’ judgment that a player deliberately attempted to injure an opponent, and it carries an automatic review by the NHL Department of Player Safety for supplemental discipline, on top of the ejection and the five-minute penalty. A routine major for a high hit can end at the rink. A match penalty follows the player into the league office.

That distinction is the whole story here. The hit was late in a decided game, on a player who had already released the puck into an empty net, and it was called on the ice as an attempt to injure rather than a mistimed check. Nazar’s recent week already sat inside an officiating flashpoint, after Fraser Minten was sent to the box for a teammate’s slash and talked the referee out of it; this one is the opposite kind of call, the most serious a referee can make, and it now belongs to Player Safety.

What did the Islanders say about it?

Exactly what the clip suggested. Emil Heineman called the hit a cheap shot, and DeBoer said he did not like it, especially at that time of the game and given who it was on, the New York Post reports. Horvat is the Islanders’ captain, he had scored both the first goal and the empty-netter, and New York is already patching its defence together with Alexander Romanov out.

The Islanders won the game 4-1 to move to 2-2, with Ilya Sorokin backed by a clean defensive night, but the result was not their headline afterwards. A team can absorb a loss in October. Losing its captain to a head evaluation on a play made after the puck was in the net is a different kind of cost, and it explains why the scrum was about the hit rather than the score.

How does Nazar’s own goal change the reading of the hit?

It makes it harder to file as a goon’s cameo. Nazar had scored Chicago’s lone goal with 2:32 remaining, at six-on-five, cutting the lead to 3-1 and giving the Blackhawks a live final two minutes, the New York Post reports. He was, at that moment, the reason the game was still a game.

Then came the empty-net sequence, and the same player produced the night’s ugliest moment. Nothing in the reports suggests Horvat did anything to provoke it beyond scoring. For a young forward on a rebuilding team that fell to 1-4-0, the sequence is a problem of judgment rather than talent: the goal showed why Chicago rates him, and the hit showed the decision-making that gets young players sat down by their own league. It is a long way from Semyon Varlamov’s return after 676 days and two knee replacements on the same ice a night earlier, but both stories turn on how much punishment a body is asked to absorb in this league.

What happens next?

Two clocks are running. The first is Horvat’s: an evaluation result, and whether the Islanders have their captain when Tampa Bay visits UBS Arena on Saturday. The second is Nazar’s: the automatic Player Safety review, and whether a hearing, a fine or a suspension follows before Chicago hosts Carolina on Saturday.

The weekend also carries quieter storylines on the same rink, with Alex Ovechkin’s farewell season under way after his sons introduced his final home opener, on a Saturday when Canadian fans are still adjusting to the first season without Hockey Night in Canada on CBC. But the league’s next word on Thursday night will be about a hit thrown after the goal was scored, by the player who had given his team its only reason to believe, on the captain who had just ended the game.