Evgeni Malkin suffers ugly looking injury on Saturday.

The Pittsburgh Penguins have lost one of their top forwards to injury.

Although it initially looked as though Penguins star Evgeni Malkin had avoided the worst of it, we now know that Malkin has in fact been injured and will miss the remainder of today's early game against the Seattle Kraken. The Penguins made the announcement official, stating that Malkin has suffered a lower body injury and won't be returning.

Malkin was shaken up after he collided with Kraken forward Chandler Stephenson as Stephenson tried to move the puck through the neutral zone, with Malkin looking to intercept. It was a quick cut to the side from Stephenson, who had control of the puck, that would cause Malkin and Stephenson to go knee on knee with neither player here appearing to have any intent to deliver a hit.

Stephenson and Malkin appear to both be making an attempt to play the puck here and as you can see from the replay below this is just an unfortunate accident.

As I mentioned it looked as though Malkin had avoided the worst of it and that's because, although he initially went to the Penguins locker room after the collision, Malkin was back on the Penguins bench shortly after leaving the game. Unfortunately he wouldn't remain on the bench for long and you have to hope that he wasn't pushing through a serious injury while running on adrenaline.

The Penguins play again on Monday, when they will face the San Jose Sharks, so it shouldn't be too long before we get a clearer picture on just how severe of an injury this will be for Malkin.