Los Angeles Kings interim coach D.J. Smith had shattered glass fall on him after a pane broke behind his team's bench Tuesday night during Game 2 of an NHL Playoffs series against Colorado.
As reported by The Associated Press, the breakage occurred after Quinton Byfield was stopped on a penalty shot by Avalanche goaltender Scott Wedgewood with 16:48 remaining in the second period of a game Colorado would win, 2-1, to take a 2-0 lead in the series.
"The glass began to sway as fans pounded on it in excitement and then gave way, with pieces raining on Smith," Pat Graham of the AP reported. "He covered his head and then brushed the glass off his suit before heading down the tunnel to the locker room. He returned a few minutes later."
“Whoever the guy [was] just kept pushing and pushing and pushing,” Smith recounted. “I looked back because it hit me a bunch of times, then it broke.”
The cleanup crew at Ball Arena in Denver brought out shovels and buckets to clean up the fragments from the L.A. bench, Graham reported, adding that Kings players mingled on the ice as they waited for a new pane to be brought in and installed.
The delay took more than 15 minutes.
Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog said he'd never seen anything like that happen before.
“There’s nothing you can do to control it. There’s nothing you can do about it, so you just deal with it,” Landeskog said of the delay. “I think maybe the only thing was that there were so many bodies on the ice that it (wore) the ice out a little bit for the rest (of the period).
“I thought the ice crew did a good job and they did their best to fix it as fast as possible. Doesn’t happen every day.”
