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Ilya Kovalchuk could miss month after big hit by his own teammate (Video)

From the Kontinental Hockey League comes today’s affirmation of the existence of the Hockey Gods:

That’s Ilya Kovalchuk of SKA St. Petersburg, running into his teammate Alexei Ponikarovsky and falling to the ice. It appeared Ponikarovsky was trying to set a pick and then tried to avoid Kovalchuk, but instead laid a nice check to his sternum.

Kovalchuk injured his shoulder on the play, and will miss up to a month of exciting KHL action.

There are several levels of amazing here:

1. Kovalchuk infamously “retired” from the NHL for the KHL, and suffered an injury just nine games into his season with SKA.

2. Ponikarovsky isn’t just Kovalchuk’s teammate with SKA – the two played together with the New Jersey Devils, which naturally leads one to believe that Ponikarovsky is a Lou Lamoriello sleeper agent programmed to subvert Kovalchuk at every turn in his post-Devils career.

3. Someone actually threw a quality check in a KHL game.

s/t @Natalia_Phila