Kurt Collins rolled on the ice in pain just minutes after he went face first into the Nike sign on the Greenberg Ice Pavilion boards.
He skated to the bench but eventually had to leave the game moments later, pinning his left arm to his chest.
He was one of two Penn State Icers to be a casualty of Saturday afternoon's physical 8-2 win over the West Virginia Mountaineers that gave Penn State its fourth-straight victory. And if Saturday was a test about whether the Icers can play a physical game, then at least the early returns were positive.
"I think when we play a team that's physical, we get physical too," defenseman Steve Thurston said. "We throw the body around a little more. When you get hit, you wanna give a hit. So, that's kind of what happens, and we got some guys who finished their checks this week."
Penn State coach Scott Balboni spoke before the season started about having a bigger team that would allow him to play more physical, but the Icers had never really had to play physical at home before this weekend.
After Penn State's (8-1-1) seven-goal first period outburst Friday night, the Mountaineers (5-4) picked up the hitting in the last two periods. Before Saturday's game, the referees even told both coaches that they would let the two teams play physical as long as it didn't get out of control.
The hitting started early when Tim O'Brien was tripped behind the West Virginia net and appeared to favor his thigh. He couldn't finish the rest of his shift but would return.
"Coming into our building and try throwing the body around is something that we don't want to happen," O'Brien said. "Our team talked about it underneath, and we wanted to come out more physical [Saturday] and make sure we let them know that we weren't going away after a blowout on Friday night."
The physical play reached its summit in the second period. Both teams threw big hits and the intensity increased, almost coming to a head when John Conte and a West Virginia player nearly fought.
"We played physical with them. They played physical with us," Balboni said. "But our guys stayed disciplined, which is a key when you play physical. We didn't get out of control and just didn't end up with 30, 40 penalty-type game."
But as the referees told each team earlier, they let them play.
The Icers had only four penalties. Two of them were unsportsmanlike conduct infractions and another was the 10-minute misconduct that ended Thurston's night in the third period.
And while West Virginia was throwing hits all over the ice in the second period, Penn State scored five goals in the period to finish off the two-game sweep.
"I think they kinda lost it," Thurston said. "When you're getting beat so bad all the time you don't feel like you have much to do. They play physical and they do different things to try to get to you. It's hard to stay out of some stuff is someone keeps doing it to you. I think we did a good job though. We didn't take many penalties and played a good weekend."
