Letang 'fine' after collision with Giroux, but will NHL look into it?

Kris Letang insisted he didn't see what hit him.

Claude Giroux insisted he didn't see Letang, either, until the last moment.

But the Flyers' captain clearly sensed that Letang was behind him and, in a bitter rivalry where no quarter is asked, none was given. Giroux delivered a violent back-shoulder check to Letang at the 13:00 mark of the second period:

Giroux had just taken a slight shove from Sidney Crosby and narrowly avoided running into Sean Couturier inside the Penguins' zone, but as he was skating backward and, seeing that a collision with Letang was unavoidable, he clearly pushed upward to maximize contact. Letang was sent flying, doubling over before hitting the ice hard with his right shoulder and head.

"I didn't see a replay. Everything happened pretty quick. Crosby kind of bumped me, and then a guy went through, and then I saw, I think it was Letang, and then I braced myself," Giroux said. "It was just a reaction. I hate to see a guy go down like that. So I'm glad he came back."

No penalty was called.

"I have an opinion, but I'm not going to share it," Mike Sullivan said of the collision.

"I'm sure the league will look into it," Crosby said. "I thought it was high."

Surely, the league's Department of Player Safety will do due diligence, but it's questionable whether they would take action. Compared to some of the hits seen in the first days of the playoffs, like Toronto's Nazem Kadri drawing a three-game suspension for boarding Boston's Tommy Wingels, this one doesn't appear as flagrant.

After hitting Letang, Giroux appeared to check on the injured player, who quickly sprinted down the runway with a cut to his left hand. It did not appear that he was struck by either's Giroux's stick or skate blade, but the force of the hit might have driven the butt end or shaft of Letang's stick into his own hand.

On whether he went to concussion protocol, Letang grinned and replied: “I don’t know. I just came in and had a little chat."

Asked what he thought of the hit: “I didn’t see it. It happened pretty quick. I didn’t see it."

Letang, a plus-4 with an assist in Game 1, returned to the bench later in the second period and played the third period in a 5-1 loss to the Flyers in Game 2.

Because he returned, Letang declared himself "fine."

In a decades-old rivalry marked by brawls and big hits, the Giroux-Letang collision is just the latest controversy. Though there was no scrum directly after the hit, we shall see if this incident isn't revisited over the scheduled final five games.

MATT SUNDAY GALLERY