APCarolina Hurricanes fans are on edge waiting to hear about the severity of a knee injury captain Eric Staal suffered Thursday during Canada's World Championships quarterfinal game against Sweden.

Late in the first period, Staal took a knee-on-knee hit from Swedish defenseman Alex Edler and went down in pain. Edler was kicked out of the game and on Friday the IIHF suspended him for the rest of the tournament.

Once again, here's the hit:

From the IIHF:

After reviewing the video evidence and the respective reports, including the Game Supervisor Report, the Referee Supervisor Report, the verbal medical report and the report from the hearing with the player, the panel has determined that Edler should have been penalized with a match penalty as he was in clear violation of the playing rule 536b (Kneeing).

...

The disciplinary panel deemed Edler’s action as reckless, dangerous and that it was in disregard to the vulnerability of his opponent and for that he must be held accountable.

Edler will miss Sweden's semifinal game against Finland on Saturday and either the bronze or gold medal game on Sunday, depending on the result.

Staal is flying back to Raleigh on Friday and is scheduled to undergo an MRI on Saturday to assess the damage.

“It’s unfortunate and hopefully it’s not too serious,” Rutherford told Chip Alexander of the News Observer. “If it is serious, hopefully there will be enough recovery time for him to be ready for next season.

"We’ll just hope for the best.”

Follow Sean Leahy on Twitter at @Sean_Leahy

Game 2 of the Western Conference semifinals was like a kick in the stomach for San Jose Sharks fans whose stomachs have already been kicked frequently than a game ball at the World Cup. Two goals in 22 seconds, with the Sharks taking two costly late-game penalties. Ouch.

You want to feel sorry for them. OK, most of us do. This Los Angeles Kings fan didn’t, and decided to troll hard with a dramatic reading for a San Jose Sharks fan’s sad lament on the HF Boards about the defeat. This is deliciously brutal (one PG-13 word):

Well that was a hundred paper cuts treated with a lemon juice and salt mixture and then slapped with a ruler for two hours …

The original post was by “StreetSharks”, who cites “#19 Joe Trollton” under its HF Boards name. The post:

What else do you expect him to say? When you lived the same failures the Sharks lived before last year, you know how it feels to be disappointed as a die hard fan.

Then put yourself in our place, a bunch of people taunting, trolling, and being cocky as hell against us after your win last year, how would you feel?

Basically, you were one of us.. respected us.. and somehow it all went downhill to a bunch of new age cocky jerks.

I'll accept the Kings win, it was a badass comback, but to come back here after being silent when it was 3-2 sharks to taunting the living **** out of us, how do you expect many of us to react?

Sorry I'm ranting to you bro, the trolls got to me tonight, cheers.

That last line might replace “don’t let the bastards get you down” as our favorite post-frustration mantra of all-time.

s/t reader Jim

Getty ImagesTrending Topics is a column that looks at the week in hockey, occasionally according to Twitter. If you're only going to comment to say how stupid Twitter is, why not just go have a good cry for the slow, sad death of your dear internet instead?

One of the worst things about the NHL today is that its supplementary discipline system is a joke. The maddening inconsistency that generally comes out of it during the regular season absolutely goes through the roof once the playoffs start.

Take, for example, the fact that the infamous Senators/Canadiens brawl game, which was rife with attempts to injure and other dirty plays, resulted in zero suspensions or fines. While there was likely a behind-closed-doors scolding for both teams from the league's Department of Player Safety, the issue was (and is, I suppose) that there is little to no transparency about it.

I remember it wasn't so long ago that Brendan Shanahan vowed to occasionally release videos explaining why certain controversial hits or incidents did not result in any supplementary discipline, and the league has very occasionally followed through on that. Not enough, perhaps, for fans to have some semblance of understanding of what the decision-making process is, but sufficient to placate the angry hordes massing at the castle walls whenever a particularly egregious incident leads to nothing at all.

But that goes away in the postseason.

A little over a year ago, the above photo of Darth Maul on ice made the rounds at Reddit Hockey.

Sadly, it was a Photoshop. While we imagine the real Darth Maul would indeed play hockey with a double-bladed stick, just like he fights Jedi with a double-edged lightsaber (or saberstaff, as it's formally known), the Darth Maul from the photo, which was taken during a Tampa Bay Lighting/San Jose Sharks game, was just carrying a regular one.

The double-bladed stick was just a fiction.

That is, until the AHL's Grand Rapids Griffins, inspired by the image, set to making the Frankenstick a reality. And, once they had, they did the only reasonable thing you can do with such a creation: They gave it to stickhandling wizard and viral video machine Tomas Jurco:

Other members of the Griffins have some nice moments with it. Willie Coetzee earns our respect for recognizing the Stars Wars influence. Triston Grant wisely suggests it needs two different curves to really be an all-situation piece of equipment.

But the magic happens once Jurco has it and begins juggling the puck while twirling it like a baton. It's pretty neat -- at least up until he breaks it because it won't do what he wanted it to.

How does he break it? With a routine slapshot, because, as unique as it may be, it remains a composite hockey stick.

Follow Harrison Mooney on Twitter at @HarrisonMooney

No. 1 Star: Brad Marchand, Boston Bruins

The Bruins struck first, edging the New York Rangers 3-2 in overtime of Game 1. Marchand scored the winner, and added an assist on Torey Krug's powerplay goal to tie the game early in the third period.

No. 2 Star: Drew Doughty, Los Angeles Kings

Doughty scored the Kings' second goal and was on the ice for the late powerplay marker that tied the game in their 4-3 comeback win over the San Jose Sharks. He was also the best skater on the ice for nearly half the game, leading all skaters with 28:28 of icetime.

The Los Angeles Kings won their sixth straight Thursday, shocking the San Jose Sharks with two goals 22 seconds apart -- in the final two minutes, no less -- to turn a 3-2 deficit into a 4-3 victory in Game 2.

Right up until the last 120 seconds of this one, the story was the San Jose Sharks and their impressive comeback. After going down two goals early in the second, San Jose refused to quit, storming back taking their first lead of the night midway through the third.

But then, 139 seconds from returning to San Jose with the series knotted at one, Marc-Edouard Vlasic turned a 5-on-4 penalty-kill situation into a 5-on-3 by putting the puck over the glass.

It was inadvertent -- they always are with this stupid penalty -- but there was no arguing the infuriating rule, and Vlasic was forced to watch his team's fortunes turn on a dime from the penalty box.

When he went in, the Sharks were up by a goal. He was released 58 seconds later, his team now down by a goal. All an incredulous, dismayed Vlasic could do was laugh.

The last time we saw the Boston Bruins, they came back from a third-period deficit and won a big game in overtime.

They have not forgotten how to do this. Brad Marchand was the hero Thursday night in Game 1 of Round 2, scoring the OT winner after 15:40 of bonus hockey.

It was the first goal of the postseason for the little guy with the big heart and even bigger nose.

That's Patrice Bergeron with the game-winning assist, as if you had to ask. If clutch were a real thing, he'd be the clutchest guy around. Bergeron was a force all through Game 1, winning 14 of 18 faceoffs, and playing 27 minutes, second on the Bruins to Zdeno Chara's absurd 38:02.

Henrik Lundqvist deserved better for the Rangers. He was outstanding, making 48 saves in the loss. 16 of those saves came in overtime, as the Bruins pressed all through the extra frame for the winner, and 7 of those 16 came on a dangerous-looking powerplay with Derek Dorsett in the box for interference.

"I thought it was pretty even going into overtime, but we got spanked in overtime," said John Tortorella. Fortunately, Lundqvist stood tall.

Ironically, it was the players most incapable of standing tall that did him in. After the Rangers took the lead just 14 seconds into the third period, rookie Torey Krug -- all 5'9" of him -- scored his first NHL goal to tie things up two and a half minutes later.

And in overtime, Lundqvist did his best to get over and stop Marchand on Bergeron's centring pass, but Marchand found a gap as the Rangers' netminder came across, sliding the puck through to end Game 1.

Game 2 goes Sunday.

As soon as the Department of Player Safety requested an in-person hearing for Raffi Torres, you knew the San Jose Sharks' winger was in trouble. I mean, sure, bringing Raffi to New York simply gave them the option of suspending him for five games or more, but this is Raffi Torres we're talking about. If they came away from the hearing with even an inkling that Torres had made the head the principal point of contact when he hit Jarrett Stoll, they were going to exercise the crap out of that option.

Sure enough, they did. Sort of. Rather than putting a number on the suspension, the NHL has gotten creative with Torres, suspending the San Jose Sharks' winger for the remainder of the semifinal series -- anywhere from 3 to 6 games.

Here's Brendan Shanahan to explain the decision:

A word on the floating suspension itself: It's a sneaky decision, as the players have the right to appeal any suspension of six games or more, and we won't know if Torres's ban is six games for awhile now. Was that calculated or what?

The night of the hit, we asked if Torres had gotten the shoulder first, or if the head was the principal point of contact. The answer, from the Department of Player Safety: yes.

Yes on both fronts. He caught Stoll's shoulder first, but as Shanahan says twice in this video, it was "a glancing blow" on his way to the principal point of contact, the head.