Late hit leads to injury during Habs/Sens prospect game.

It should have been a friendly exhibition game but unfortunately for the Ottawa Senators the prospects game they had on Sunday against the Montreal Canadiens turned ugly for them early on.

In the very first period of the game, 21 year old undrafted Canadiens defenseman Arber Xhekaj delivered what looked very much like a late hit to former Ottawa Senators fourth round draft pick Viktor Lodin. Less than 6 minutes had expired on the game clock by the time that Lodin was laid out in the corner, and unfortunately the Senators have now confirmed that he will not return to the game.

Lodin did appear to have the puck earlier in the play, but either lost it, or left it behind deliberately, long before the hit from Xhekaj made contact.

It looks like there's a chance that the hit may have caught Lodin up high as well, but given that this was a prospects game there were only very limited camera angles available which makes it much more difficult to tell exactly what happened. You can see the short replay of the hit in the video below, which is the one angle we do have of the hit from today's game.