from Gabriel Landeskog at The Players' Tribune,

You know two things for sure when you get suited up to play in the Shark Tank: It’s going to be loud, and it’s going to be physical.

Our game against San Jose in late January 2013 was no exception. Near the end of the first period, I was carrying the puck through the neutral zone when I saw “Jumbo” Joe Thornton coming to clog up the middle of the ice. I curled to the boards to avoid his stick-check, and the puck flipped up on edge. I looked down for a split second to gather it. When I picked my head back up, everything went black.

I just remember hearing the crowd roaring as I slowly got back to my feet. I’d lost my stick in the collision and I couldn’t find it, so I just skated back to the bench as quickly as I could. I didn’t want to give the crowd anything extra to feed on. When I reached the bench, I knew I had got caught pretty good. There was blood pouring from my nose, and I could feel that I had tweaked my knee, too.

When I limped back to the dressing room, my primary concern was actually my knee, not my head. Subconsciously, you know after taking that hard of a hit that something must be wrong with your head.

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