Martin Calls Malone; Zach Budish Suffers Injury

In Saturday night’s Denver-North Dakota game, UND forward Brad Malone hit Jesse Martin while Martin’s head was down, and Martin suffered multiple neck fractures. It is believed his hockey career is over but so far the prognosis is good for him being able to walk and lead a normal life again, which is great news. In my mind, the illegality of the hit is irrelevant because of what it resulted in, but the five minute major and game misconduct for Malone seems appropriate. I do not necessarily think Malone intended to hit Martin to injure him, or hit him in the vicious way that he did, just that it was a hit to the head and those are the types of hits that NCAA hockey is trying to get rid of.

Anyways, in much much better news, Martin actually reached out to Malone because he heard Malone was feeling guilty and “he wanted Brad to know there were no hard feelings.” Regardless of a person’s feelings on the hit, I think everyone can agree that Martin reaching out is an extremely classy move and hopefully he will be able to get back on the ice at some point in his career, and if not, at least be able to lead a normal life. Get well soon, Jesse.

In other news, Minnesota forward Zach Budish suffered a lower body injury in a moped accident on Monday. Not much more is known at this point, but Don Lucia is slated to have a press conference this afternoon so I’ll update the post as soon as I hear something. For more up to the minute stuff, follow @hammyhockey on Twitter. There are rumors, though nothing concrete, that Budish injured his knee. He already missed his high school Senior season of hockey after injuring his knee in the previous football season.