Viel caught the unsuspecting Dach in Anaheim’s end three minutes into the first period after the Montreal forward swatted at the puck with his arm but missed.<\/p>\n
Editor’s Picks 1 Related<\/p>\n Dach fell to the ice with his face in his gloves before gingerly making his way to the bench, and eventually to the dressing room. Viel was not penalized.<\/p>\n Canadiens defenseman Arber Xhekaj<\/a> and forward Josh Anderson<\/a> approached Viel later in the period, but Viel declined apparent requests to fight.<\/p>\n The hit came three days after Ducks defenseman Radko Gudas<\/a> ended Toronto captain Auston Matthews<\/a>‘ season with a knee-on-knee hit. Matthews has a torn medial collateral ligament in his left knee. Gudas was given a major penalty and ejected, then suspended five games for kneeing == the maximum the Department of Safety could levy because the hearing was by phone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mar 15, 2026, 09:02 PM ET MONTREAL — Montreal forward Kirby Dach left the Canadiens’ game Sunday night…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543174,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-543173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1773628988_202_r1628054_1296x1296_1-1.jpg&w=130&h=130&scale=crop&location=center.jpeg\")
<\/a>![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1773628988_884_r1628106_1296x1296_1-1.jpg&w=130&h=130&scale=crop&location=center.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n