Emergency crews raced to the rinkside at the HP Pavilion Tuesday night during the San Jose Sharks hockey game but it wasn't to treat a player who had been hit by fists flying at the game. It was for a fan -- a young boy watching from the stands with his family.
When one of the players from the Nashville Predators hit the puck in the game's first period, it deflected off another player's stick and flew into the stands, striking the boy in the face.
A witness told the Mercury News that the boy was bleeding from around his eye.
The boy's family says he was not seriously injured. A spokesman for the Sharks said the boy was taken to a hospital and examined, but could not say whether he was held for observation or just treated and released right away.
The boy was sitting in the first 10 rows at the arena, adjacent to safety nets that were installed throughout the league to protect fans after an incident in Columbus, Ohio in 2002. In that incident, a 13-year-old girl was hit in the temple by a puck that came flying from the ice and died two days later.
