During Ottawa’s 3-2 defeat of the Florida Panthers last night, a certain Senator had to leave the game after karma stepped in.

On the opening goal, Panther forward Stephen Weiss cut to the net with Anton Volchenkov following him closely.  When defenceman Andy Sutton roared toward him across the slot, Weiss managed to dodge Sutton’s high hit while simultaneously sliding the puck into the net.  Sutton did have one victim, however: Volchenkov.  The latter defenceman was down on the ice for a while, and had to leave the game with an “upper body injury” (thanks again, Pat Quinn).  Watch the whole thing here (starts at 0:17).

Why do I say this is karma-related?  Well, if you’ll recall, Anton Volchenkov dished out a couple of hits against the Flyers last Tuesday; hits that were questionable at best.  This includes the elbow to Dan Carcillo’s head (0:11), and drilling Simon Gagne into the boards (0:55).  Arguments can be made for both hits being clean (and obviously have been made, since Volchenkov received no suspension), but an unbiased observer should be able to see that yes, Carcillo did receive an elbow to his head, and yes, Gagne did turn at the last second, but he was still that magical metre away from the boards where it’s dangerous to hit anybody anyway.  (The Senators’ colour commentator even offers, “you be the judge,” as if he wasn’t in the process of telling you what to think about it anyway.  How very Fox News of him.)

Volchenkov has made his name in the NHL by dishing out hard hits, and most of them are perfectly clean.  But these are two that demonstrate the growing lack of respect players have for each other, as they hit opponents to hurt them rather than hitting to intimidate or to take them out of the play.  The Senators have plenty of players on their roster who pull this dirty stuff (to name a few: Chris Neil, Jarkko Ruutu, Matt Carkner - who had a cheap hit of his own in this game), and it’s only through sheer luck that there hadn’t yet been any opponents who received a major injury.  In this game, though, Andy Sutton hopped at Stephen Weiss, and probably would at least have been called for charging (due to the jump) if he’d made contact with his intended target.  Instead, the cheap stuff backfired, and the Senators lost one of their best defencemen for the remainder of the game.

Whether Volchenkov has to miss some time or not, it’s hard not to see the justice in this.