CHICAGO — Blackhawks winger Jujhar Khaira had to be stretchered off the ice in the second period Tuesday night after he was knocked out cold from a massive hit by defenseman Jacob Trouba in the Rangers’ 6-2 win at United Center.
The night took a turn when Trouba stonewalled Khaira, who had his head down on the play and came crashing down to the ice. Several trainers swarmed Khaira and tended to him before he had to be carried out on a stretcher.
Khaira was alert, as he raised his arm to the crowd on his way off the ice. The Blackhawks announced that Khaira was taken by ambulance to Northwestern Hospital for further testing.
Trouba was not made available after the game, but head coach Gerard Gallant said he thought it was a clean hit and acknowledged it was an unfortunate situation.
“It looked like [Trouba] stepped up and the guy had his head down bad,” Gallant said after the win. “You just hate to see somebody get hit that hurt. In my eyes it was all fairly clean. But he had his head down big-time, looking at the puck, and Troubs stepped in.
“I didn’t feel too good and I know our player didn’t feel too good, either.”
Naturally, Trouba later had to drop the gloves with Blackhawks defenseman Riley Stillman, who challenged the Rangers defenseman for knocking Khaira out of the game.
To go along with the fight, Trouba also scored the first goal of the game and assisted on Artemi Panarin’s 5-2 score in the third for the Gordie Howe hat trick.
While the Rangers have acknowledged their shortcomings on faceoffs, they’ve often been able to find ways to ensure it doesn’t have any effect on the end results of games.
That trend continued on Tuesday night, with the Rangers winning just 30 of 68 battles at the dots for a 44.1 faceoff percentage. Both of the Blackhawks’ goals came off faceoff wins in the Rangers’ zone.
“They’ve been doing it longer than I’ve been here — and you’ve been talking about it longer than I’ve been here,” Gallant said. “We’re trying. It cost us two goals tonight, but you know what? We won the hockey game.”
What started as a defensive-zone faceoff loss from the Rangers ended with Chicago defenseman Erik Gustafsson sending a long shot from the top of the zone — which Blueshirts goalie Alexandar Georgiev clearly didn’t see very well — to knot the game 1-1 in the first period.
The Rangers were bitten by another faceoff loss in the D zone at 7:09 of the first, when Kirby Dach netted the Blackhawks’ second goal on their fifth shot of the night.
The Rangers’ postponed Nov. 28 game against the Islanders has been rescheduled to 7p.m. on March 17 at Madison Square Garden, the NHL announced Tuesday.
