'Obviously, a Scary Moment'

It's one thing to be scored upon. Then to add injury to insult your own teammate whacks you upside the head. Then blithely skates away.

Panthers goalie Tomas Vokoun is on his way back to South Florida with the team Monday night after being taken to an Atlanta-area hospital due to a lacerated ear after being accidentally hit by a teammate’s stick. Vokoun required several stiches to close up the deep laceration.

Just seconds after Atlanta’s Ilya Kovalchuk scored at 8:54 of the first period, defenseman Keith Ballard swung his stick in frustration at the goal post. Vokoun, who was down on the ice, started to get up and was struck on the side of the head by Ballard’s two-handed swing.

You need to go to about the 1:00 mark of the video until they get to a replay that shows what happened.

"Obviously, a scary moment," Stephen Weiss told Fox Sports Florida. "You never want to see anyone get hurt like that, especially a teammate. We were just making sure he was OK. None of us was really sure what happened, so we were just trying to figure out what exactly happened. We found out...we got the word he was fine."