Frank Nazar Gets a Match Penalty for a High Hit on Bo Horvat as the Islanders Captain Is Evaluated

Frank Nazar scored the goal that gave Chicago hope and then, about a minute later, took the penalty that ended his night. The Blackhawks forward received a match penalty on Thursday for a shoulder to the head of Islanders captain Bo Horvat, Sportsnet reports, on the empty-net goal that sealed New York’s 4-1 win at UBS Arena. Horvat was still being evaluated after the game, most likely for a concussion, coach Pete DeBoer said.

What happened on the play?

The game was effectively over when it happened. With less than two minutes left, the Islanders leading 3-1 and Chicago’s net empty, Horvat collected the puck in his own end after a blocked shot and fired it the length of the ice into the empty net, Sportsnet reports. Just after Horvat released the puck, Nazar caught him up high with a shoulder to the head area.

The response was instant. A scrum formed, Jean-Gabriel Pageau went after Tyler Bertuzzi, and Bertuzzi and Logan Stanley received 10-minute misconducts alongside Nazar’s match penalty, Sportsnet and Lighthouse Hockey report. Horvat, whose empty-netter was his second goal of the night, went to the dressing room for evaluation instead of finishing the game he had just decided.

Why does a match penalty matter more than a major?

Because of what the call itself alleges. A match penalty is the officials’ judgment that a player deliberately attempted to injure an opponent, and it carries an automatic review by the NHL Department of Player Safety for supplemental discipline, on top of the ejection and the five-minute penalty. A routine major for a high hit can end at the rink. A match penalty follows the player into the league office.

That distinction is the whole story here. The hit was late in a decided game, on a player who had already released the puck into an empty net, and it was called on the ice as an attempt to injure rather than a mistimed check. Nazar’s recent week already sat inside an officiating flashpoint, after Fraser Minten was sent to the box for a teammate’s slash and talked the referee out of it; this one is the opposite kind of call, the most serious a referee can make, and it now belongs to Player Safety.

What did the Islanders say about it?

Exactly what the clip suggested. Emil Heineman called the hit a cheap shot, and DeBoer said he did not like it, especially at that time of the game and given who it was on, the New York Post reports. Horvat is the Islanders’ captain, he had scored both the first goal and the empty-netter, and New York is already patching its defence together with Alexander Romanov out.

The Islanders won the game 4-1 to move to 2-2, with Ilya Sorokin backed by a clean defensive night, but the result was not their headline afterwards. A team can absorb a loss in October. Losing its captain to a head evaluation on a play made after the puck was in the net is a different kind of cost, and it explains why the scrum was about the hit rather than the score.

How does Nazar’s own goal change the reading of the hit?

It makes it harder to file as a goon’s cameo. Nazar had scored Chicago’s lone goal with 2:32 remaining, at six-on-five, cutting the lead to 3-1 and giving the Blackhawks a live final two minutes, the New York Post reports. He was, at that moment, the reason the game was still a game.

Then came the empty-net sequence, and the same player produced the night’s ugliest moment. Nothing in the reports suggests Horvat did anything to provoke it beyond scoring. For a young forward on a rebuilding team that fell to 1-4-0, the sequence is a problem of judgment rather than talent: the goal showed why Chicago rates him, and the hit showed the decision-making that gets young players sat down by their own league. It is a long way from Semyon Varlamov’s return after 676 days and two knee replacements on the same ice a night earlier, but both stories turn on how much punishment a body is asked to absorb in this league.

What happens next?

Two clocks are running. The first is Horvat’s: an evaluation result, and whether the Islanders have their captain when Tampa Bay visits UBS Arena on Saturday. The second is Nazar’s: the automatic Player Safety review, and whether a hearing, a fine or a suspension follows before Chicago hosts Carolina on Saturday.

The weekend also carries quieter storylines on the same rink, with Alex Ovechkin’s farewell season under way after his sons introduced his final home opener, on a Saturday when Canadian fans are still adjusting to the first season without Hockey Night in Canada on CBC. But the league’s next word on Thursday night will be about a hit thrown after the goal was scored, by the player who had given his team its only reason to believe, on the captain who had just ended the game.

Has the league announced a hearing? (Update, October 9)

Yes, and quickly. The NHL Player Safety account announced that Nazar will have a hearing for an illegal check to the head on Horvat, Pro Hockey Rumors reports. Nazar has played 127 NHL games without a suspension, and the hearing is believed to be by phone, which carries a maximum suspension of five games.

The other half of the update is a non-update, and it matters just as much. DeBoer said after Islanders practice that Horvat is still being evaluated by doctors and that no update was available yet, Pro Hockey Rumors reports. Horvat has led the Islanders in goals (100) and points (203) since arriving in January 2023, and he has four goals and five points this season, so his status for Saturday against Tampa Bay is the Islanders’ whole week in one medical sentence. The hearing decides Nazar’s next few games. The evaluation decides whether the captain who scored twice on Thursday plays at all.

Has Player Safety ruled on the hit? (Update, October 9)

Yes. The Department of Player Safety suspended Nazar for two games, without pay, for an illegal check to the head of Horvat during Thursday’s game, the NHL announced on Friday. The league’s release puts the incident at 18:25 of the third period, notes the match penalty assessed on the play, and sets the forfeiture at $68,041.14, based on Nazar’s average annual salary under the collective bargaining agreement, with the money going to the Players’ Emergency Assistance Fund.

The suspension takes Nazar out of Chicago’s games on Saturday and Tuesday, and he is eligible to return on Thursday against Winnipeg, Pro Hockey Rumors reports. For a player with no previous suspension in 127 games, two games sits in the middle of the range the phone hearing allowed: the league treated the hit as a suspendable head check, not as the worst version of one.

The same week’s other officiating case ran the opposite way: Ekman-Larsson left a game on a Lauzon hit that drew no penalty at all, then practised a day later. Horvat’s half of the story is still unwritten. He was pulled from Thursday’s game immediately by the league’s concussion spotters and did not take part in Friday’s optional practice, the New York Post reports, and DeBoer said he would see the team’s doctors again on Friday morning to see how he felt. Kyle Palmieri told reporters the hit was over the line and that Horvat had been in a vulnerable position. The Islanders can measure the justice in Nazar’s absence precisely: two games for the hit, against the open-ended possibility that their captain, whose four goals in four games lead the team, misses Saturday against Tampa Bay and beyond.

Is Horvat playing on Saturday? (Update, October 10)

Yes. Horvat will play against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday night after practising on the top line and the top power-play unit at the morning skate, NHL.com reports. That closes the open half of this story: the captain who was pulled by the concussion spotters on Thursday, and who skipped Friday’s optional practice while still being evaluated, misses no games at all.

DeBoer summed up the club’s relief briefly on Saturday, calling the hit dangerous and saying the league had dealt with it, NHL.com reports. His wider point was about the range of outcomes on a head hit: a team can lose a player for a long stretch on a play like that, and the Islanders instead get their top scorer back for the next game.

Nazar also spoke for the first time since the suspension on Saturday. He said he is still processing a ruling he felt was harsh for a first-time offender, Chicago Hockey Now reports. His account of the play was that he kept his shoulder and elbow in, did not lunge or reach, and skated through Horvat to pressure the empty-net attempt. He said he texted Horvat after the incident to check on him, and that Horvat told him he was feeling good, with no lingering hostility between the two. Nazar sits out Saturday against Carolina and the Pittsburgh game before he can return on Thursday against Winnipeg, while the teams do not meet again until late February.

How does the Rodrigues case compare? (Update, October 12)

Player Safety’s next stick case landed at the opposite end of the scale. On Sunday the department fined New Jersey’s Evan Rodrigues the maximum $5,000, with no suspension, after his jab at Marco Rossi’s throat area was downgraded from a spearing major to a double minor on review. Nazar’s two-game ban for a head check thrown in the flow of play, against Rodrigues’ fine for a stick jab at a stoppage, is the comparison the Canucks were making within hours of the ruling, and it is now the season’s clearest example of how much the label an act is given decides the punishment it carries.

The Pittsburgh game Nazar sits out is also the night Chicago expects its captain back in the lineup: Bedard returns a month early from shoulder surgery for his captain’s debut against the Penguins, skating on the first line Nazar has been filling in his absence.

Not every discipline case this month needed a hearing. In Boston, the price for a penalty problem was set by the player’s own coach: Nikita Zadorov was made a healthy scratch for discipline on Saturday, and his agent’s four word reply on X is what turned a one game message into a public story.

The no-call debate did not end with Nazar’s case either. On Saturday in Edmonton, Leon Draisaitl caught Auston Matthews with a cross-check to the ribs and no penalty was called, leaving the same question Nazar’s suspension answered in the other direction: what the league does when the officials let a play go.