from Eric Duhatschek of the Globe and Mail,

On a night when Nicklas Kronwall was taken off the ice on a stretcher, Jonathan Bernier gave up a goal borrowed from the playbook of his former partner in L.A., and the last two teams fell from the ranks of the unbeaten, your first thought was to check the skies and see if there was a full moon out.

Yes, it was that freaky kind of night. First, the Kronwall hit, which came early in one of the multiple rivalry games on the NHL schedule Thursday night and featured his Detroit Red Wings and their once arch-rivals, the Colorado Avalanche.

It was Detroit’s first crack at Patrick Roy-led Colorado and brought to mind many fabulous battles of the recent past. But it was all eerily quiet at the Pepsi Center early in the first when Kronwall went back to retrieve a puck and got creamed into the boards by the Avalanche’s Cody McLeod, who received a boarding major and a game misconduct on the play.

Kronwall put on the brakes and tried to reverse the puck and in turning to his left, briefly had his back to McLeod, who ploughed on into him. It was one of those bang-bang reaction plays that will put NHL discipline chief Brendan Shanahan’s powers to the test because the sequence wasn’t as clear-cut dirty as some of the other suspension-worthy incidents we’ve seen this week. Officially, Kronwall is out with a concussion.

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