Marcus Johansson, Michael Ferland both leave game after wild hit-fight sequence

Early in his fourth game as a Boston Bruin since being acquired by the organization just before the 2019 NHL Trade Deadline, Marcus Johansson was labelled by one of the league’s premier power forwards.

As a result of his collision with Hurricanes forward Micheal Ferland, his future is once again filled with question marks.

The hit was completely clean as contact was clearly shoulder-to-shoulder. And although the two are the same height and Ferland is only 12 pounds heavier than the 28-year-old Swede, Johansson was (understandably) quite shaken up on the play.

Here it is from another angle.

He remained down on the ice for a few moments before leaving in obvious pain, and has been ruled out of a return to the contest. Since November of 2017, Johansson has missed time on three separate occasions due to concussions, and was most recently sidelined in December with an upper-body ailment.

Less than a minute after play got going again and after a sequence including several big-time hits from both squads, his teammate David Backes came to his defence — with the former St. Louis Blue grabbing Ferland before the two began to exchange fists.

Ferland left the ice after the tilt and was also ruled out for the rest of the game due to an upper-body injury.

The last couple of seasons in the NHL haven’t been too kind to Mr. Johansson in particular, who was a consistent secondary scorer with the Washington Capitals for the first seven years of his career. He was limited to only 29 games with the New Jersey last season, and his 2018-19 campaign got off to a slow start from a production standpoint before he missed three weeks of action in late December and early January with yet another ailment.

Looking to give him a fresh start, Boston picked up Johansson at the deadline hoping to give themselves some more scoring depth ahead of the postseason.

He has one assist in his first three games with the team.

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