Brett Howden destroys Jiri Kulich with a high hit.

The Buffalo Sabres appear to have lost the services of rookie forward Jiri Kulich... at least for the remainder of the day.

On Saturday, Kulich and the Sabres faced off against the Vegas Golden Knights in what was a tightly contested game, but roughly midway through the game's second period things would take an ugly turn. It would be at that time that Kulich would find himself on the receiving end of an open ice hit from Golden Knights forward Brett Howden.

Howden would catch Kulich coming out of the corner and had a full head of steam when he made contact with Kulich, running into the young Sabres forward like a runaway freight train. The impact would send both men crashing down to the ice but although Howden was able to bounce right back up, Kulich would remain down on the ice for several long moments.

In fact an infuriated Peyton Krebs would skate over to challenge Howden to drop the gloves, with Krebs clearly having taken issue with the hit, and Howden answered that challenge with both men throwing down in the second period.

It wasn't much of a scrap and all of the concern remained on Kulich who did not move on the ice even after the two fighters had been separated. Kulich would not return for the start of the third period.

This hit has caused a bit of a mixed reaction with some feeling that Howden was attempting to go through the body while Kulich put himself in a vulnerable position, while others felt Howden should have let up. Here is one more angle:

Let me know what you think of this hit in the comments.