Florida Panthers defenseman Keith Ballard was rather upset after Ilya Kovalchuk scored for the Atlanta Thrashers at 8:54 of the first period Monday night.

Unfortunately for goalie Tomas Vokoun, Ballard's coping mechanism of choice was a baseball swing at the goal cage that instead landed on the side of the Florida keeper's head.

An off-the-TV clip is also on YouTube. Vokoun was taken off the ice on a stretcher, suffering through obvious pain. The Associated Press reports, via a Panthers spokesman, that the goalie "had a laceration to his ear but was alert when he was placed in an ambulance and taken to a local hospital."

“There was no internal ear damage, just a laceration,” Panthers general manager Randy Sexton said. Vokoun will meet the team at the airport and fly home with them, he said.

It will be determined Tuesday whether Vakoun will be available for Florida’s next game, at home against Colorado on Wednesday, Sexton said.

If you feel like you've seen a less severe version of this scenario play out before, congratulations: Your memory stretches all the way back to May 2009, when Slovakian winger Tomas Surovy ka-bonged teammate and Montreal Canadiens goalie Jaroslav Halak's head after their team surrendered the eighth goal in a 8-0 loss to the Czech Republic at the world championships.

Of course, there's a world of difference between an aggressive tap on the top of the mask and Ballard's wallop to the side of Vokoun's head. Stretchers have a way of sucking the funny out of these situations.