The world of hockey is still in shock today over the events that took place at the HSBC Arena in Buffalo on Sunday night. In the race for a playoff berth in the Eastern Conference, the Sabres hosted the Florida Panthers. The Sabres were leading 4-3 in the third period, when the unthinkable happened.

At 9:56, as Panthers' Olli Jokinen stumbled over a Sabres player, his right skate came up and cut teammate Richard Zednik's neck as he was skating in behind the play. Zednik stumbled over Jokinen, headed straight to the bench with his hand over his neck and a trail of blood behind him.

Sabres goalie Ryan Miller saw the whole thing from the start and yelled for the medical staff and officials to stop the play. Most of the players were already at the other end of the ice when the whistle blew three times.

When Zednik reached the bench, a medical trainer was on the ice and pressed a towel to his neck as fellow teammate Jassen Cullimore helped him off the ice.

Just as soon as Zednik stepped foot onto the bench, he collapsed into the trainer as he was carried off to the locker room to be attended to by the medical staff in the Sabres arena.

"It's something you never want to see," his teammate Stephen Weiss said, choked up. "It's the worst thing I've ever seen in hockey. The worst went through my mind... Just his face [when he was] coming off [the ice], was just, you know, something you don't want to see. I don't know how to explain it, but it was a scary look. He looked very scared."

"I walked in and saw him on the stretcher," Panthers' goalie Tomas Vokoun said. "I was very concerned when he came off. He was obviously very scared. He was conscious, I guess, that's what the trainer said. His eyes were closed, but he was moving and moaning."

As Zednik was attended to by the medical doctors in the arena, hockey fans throughout HSBC Arena stood in shock looking at the three puddles of blood and the trail of blood to the Panthers' locker room. The players, fans and NHL staff said their own silent prayers for Zednik as they awaited word on what would happen next.

"I saw the whole thing, one of the worst things I've ever seen in hockey," said Sabres goaltender Ryan Miller, who was about 20 feet away from the incident. "I saw Jokinen's skate going up, so it was kind of like a car crash. I had to keep watching. I saw it, and it looked like a Quentin Tarantino movie. I don't know. I don't want to see anymore of that."

Olli Jokinen had no idea at first that it was his skate that had lacerated his teammate's neck.

"Blood was kind of flying out of his throat and I was right there," said Jokinen, Florida's captain. "I've never seen anything like it. It's very scary."

When word came that Zednik's condition had stabilized, the fans throughout the Sabres arena gave him a standing ovation. NHL's disciplinarian Colin Campbell was also in attendance to watch his son, Gregory, play for the Panthers. He made the decision that the game would continue once he learned of Zednik's condition, even though the players' heads just weren't in the game anymore.

"If it would have been my call," Jokinen said. "I would have gone to the hospital with him. There's a lot of things bigger than hockey."

Zednik had emergency surgery at Buffalo General Hospital and was listed in stable condition in the Intensive Care Unit on Monday morning.

[Source for Citations: Buffalo News and Miami Herald]