In a dramatic return to the NHL after his Olympic triumph with Team USA in Milan, Ottawa Senators captain Brady Tkachuk found himself in a precarious situation when he narrowly avoided a broken nose. The incident unfolded during a heated matchup against the Detroit Red Wings in Ottawa on Thursday.

The tense moment occurred when Tkachuk, preoccupied with the puck high above, was blindsided by a fierce hit from Simon Edvinsson, the towering 6-foot-6 defenseman from Sweden. The unexpected collision caused Tkachuk’s own stick to recoil into his face, putting him at risk of a serious injury. As he went down on the ice, his teammate Dylan Cozens immediately stepped in to confront Edvinsson, leading to a brief scuffle.

In the aftermath, both Cozens and Edvinsson found themselves in the penalty box, joined shortly by Tkachuk, who was penalized with a 10-minute misconduct for attempting to retaliate against Edvinsson. Despite the tense atmosphere, the two players continued to exchange words from their respective penalty boxes, animatedly pointing to the replay of the hit displayed on the arena’s scoreboard.

The game took an exciting turn in overtime when Dylan Larkin, a fellow Olympic gold medalist and Tkachuk’s teammate from Team USA, scored the winning goal for Detroit, sealing a thrilling victory for the Red Wings.

Tkachuk and Edvinsson continued chirping at each other from their respective penalty boxes as they both gestured to the replay being played on the scoreboard. 

Detroit ultimately won in overtime on a goal from Tkachuk’s Team USA teammate, Dylan Larkin.

Facing the visiting Detroit Red Wings in Canada’s capital on Thursday, Tkachuk was on the receiving end of a brutal blindside hit from 6ft6 Swedish defenseman Simon Edvinsson

Head athletic therapist Domenic Nicoletta of the Ottawa Senators assists Brady Tkachuk

Simon Edvinsson of the Detroit Red Wings fights Dylan Cozens after the hit on Tkachuk 

Senators spokespeople did not respond to the Daily Mail’s request for an update on Tkachuk.  

Thursday’s loss came after Tkachuk criticized the White House over an AI social media video.

After winning gold against the rival Canadians, Tkachuk and 19 other members of Team USA visited Trump at the White House before watching State of the Union speech on Tuesday night.

But since then, the White House released a misleading AI clip on TikTok in which Tkachuk appeared to criticize Canadians.

‘They booed our national anthem, so I had to come out and teach those maple-syrup-eating f***s a lesson,’ Tkachuk said in the altered clip which had more than 11 million views on TikTok. 

Tkachuk responded to the clip ahead of Thursday’s game.

‘Well, it’s clearly fake, because it’s not my voice, not my lips moving,’ Tkachuk said Thursday. ‘I’m not in control of any of those accounts. I know that those words would never come out of my mouth. So, I can’t do anything about it.’

USA hockey star Brady Tkachuk has fumed over an AI-edited video posted by the White House

When asked if he enjoyed the video, he added: ‘It’s not my voice. It’s not what I was saying.

‘I would never say that. That’s not who I am, so I guess I don’t like that video because that would never come out of my mouth and never had that thought.’

Trump also sparked controversy after footage of his phone call with the victorious men’s team surfaced on social media.

While congratulating them on winning gold, the President joked that he was also ‘going to have to bring the women’s team’ to Washington after they also beat Canada in the final.

Trump then added that he ‘probably would be impeached’ if he didn’t extend the invitation to America’s female hockey champions.

The women’s team subsequently turned down Trump’s invitation due to ‘scheduled academic and professional commitments following the Games.’

And Tkachuk said he understood why they could have felt insulted by his locker-room joke, which some have labeled misogynistic.

‘I mean, I get it,’ he said before detailing the positive relationship between the men’s and women’s teams. ‘We support them, they support us. You can’t control what other people say. It was fun being around them, seeing how they play and the excellence around them.

‘If I see one of them, we’ll talk about the excitement of what we can control, which is to be gold medalists.’

Tkachuk was also accused by some of shouting ‘Close the northern border!’ during the congratulatory call with Trump, but he stressed: ‘It’s crazy when things go on social media, how fast they go. I would never say anything like that.’

During his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, Trump announced that the USA women’s team will still be visiting the White House at a later date despite rejecting his first invitation.

‘They beat a fantastic Canadian team in overtime, as everybody saw. As did the American women who will soon be coming to the White House,’ he told Congress.