Brady Tkachuk destroys Brendan Lemieux in post-game comments.

There was a bizarre incident on Saturday night, one that will likely alter how Los Angeles Kings forward Brendan Lemieux is perceived around the National Hockey League.

During the third period of a Saturday night game between the Ottawa Senators and the Los Angeles Kings, Lemieux appeared to take a pretty sizeable bite out of Ottawa Senators captain Brady Tkachuk. At the time that this all happened it was difficult to tell what went on, but there's little doubt now that Tkachuk was in fact bitten by Lemieux.

Following the game Tkachuk would comment on the situation, and I must say I have never heard him animated like this before. Tkachuk was fuming, understandably so, and he did not hold back one bit when roasting Lemieux with his comments.

“This is the one time I’m going to answer this,” said Tkachuk. “It was the most gutless thing somebody could ever do. This guy, you can ask anyone of his teammates, nobody ever wants to play with him, this guy is a bad guy and a bad teammate, he focuses on himself all the time.

“The guy’s just a joke. He shouldn't be in the league. This guy’s gutless. No other team want him, he’s going to keep begging to be in the NHL but no other team is going to want him, he’s an absolute joke. I can’t even wrap my head around it. People don’t even do this. He’s just a bad guy.”

Tkachuk didn’t stop there either.

“It’s outrageous. Kids don’t even do that anymore. Babies do that. I don’t even know what he was thinking, he’s just a complete brick head. He’s got nothing up there. Bad guy, bad player but what a joke he is,” said Tkachuk.

The incident began as a scrum between a number of players on both sides of the ice. It lasted only a few seconds but when most of the dust had settled, Tkachuk and Lemieux were still going at it at the edge of the pack. Eventually the two men would wrestle one another to the ground, and it was there that the bite would occur. Suddenly, as the two men were wrestling for position on the ice and throwing the occasional punch, the look on the face of Tkachuk changed completely and he began to gesture towards his hand.

Tkachuk would rise to his feet and continued to be extremely vocal with the officials while gesturing at his hand, something that is not typical for him, and as he turned his hand over to show the officials we got the first look at what we now know to be bite marks.

Here's the replay:

Here's a still shot of the bite, it's a little blurry but you can see the damage that was done to Tkachuk's hand.

There's been no word yet from the National Hockey League on whether or not this will warrant some time of additional discipline for Lemieux, but given how ugly all of this looks I wouldn't be surprised to see the league step in here and make a ruling.