One of the main reasons NHL teams opposed player participation in the Olympics was the concern over injuries that could be avoided. That fear has come to fruition for the Los Angeles Kings. Toward the end of today’s game between Canada and Switzerland, Kevin Fiala had to be stretchered off the ice due to an apparent leg or knee injury.
As mentioned, the injury happened with approximately three minutes left in the game. Fiala absorbed a hit from Tom Wilson and was in immediate pain on the ice. Although the hit was leveled, the incident causing the injury seemed accidental, and more like a freak play. According to Mark Lazerus of The Athletic, after the game, Wilson said, “It’s the Olympic Games and I feel terrible that he may not be able to keep playing. Just sending his family and him my best. You never want to see a guy go down, in a tournament like this, especially.”
Still, accident or not, it doesn’t make the situation any easier for the Kings. Fiala is the team’s second-highest scorer with 18 goals and 40 points in 56 games while averaging over 19 minutes of ice time per game.
Considering how starved Los Angeles is for offense, it’s a worst-case scenario. The team recently acquired high-scoring Artemi Panarin before the Olympic break, but that didn’t relieve all of the team’s goal-scoring woes. No, the Kings haven’t yet played with Panarin on the ice, but losing a player with Fiala’s goal-scoring capabilities will objectively make it more difficult for them to put the puck in the net.
There haven’t been many updates regarding Fiala’s immediate status. Arpon Basu of The Athletic reported that Fiala has been taken to a local hospital, and there are concerns that the injury could be season-ending. If that’s the case, the Kings’ uphill climb toward playoff contention just became remarkably more difficult.