The hockey world held its breath for Scott Sabourin on Saturday night after the Ottawa Senators forward was involved in a scary incident in Boston. Thankfully, it appears Sabourin has escaped with relatively minor damage. 

Early in the first period of of the Bruins-Senators game at TD Garden, Sabourin attempted to throw the body on Boston forward David Backes near the blue line of Bruins' zone. It didn't look like a particularly violent collision but, upon further inspection, you can see that Sabourin and Backes made head-to-head contact at a pretty scary rate of speed. 

Sabourin was knocked out cold before he hit the ice and he crashed face first to the ice, where he remained motionless for an unsettling amount of time. Blood pooled around Sabourin's head on the ice and there was about a 10 minute delay as medical staff came to his aid.

While the medical staff tended to Sabourin and stabilized him before loading him onto a stretcher, everyone in attendance looked on with a gut-wrenching level of concern -- including Senators and Bruins players on the ice. Backes was shaken up and cameras caught him appearing to fight back tears as Sabourin laid on the ice. 

After Sabourin was stretchered off the ice, Backes, who has a history of concussions during his NHL career, headed to the locker room and was ruled out for the remainder of the game with an upper-body injury. 

As for Sabourin, he was taken to a nearby Boston medical center for further evaluation, but he was able to give a thumbs up to the Boston crowd and was speaking with team doctors while leaving the arena. 

On Sunday morning, Senators general manager Pierre Dorion announced that Sabourin suffered a fractured nose as a result of the incident and would be released from the hospital.

Sabourin also posted a photo on his Instagram showing him smiling a hospital bed with a chipped tooth, a black eye and some cuts to his face. The Sens forward wrote "Thanks for all the well wishes. Hope to be back out on the ice in the near future" along with the photo.

If the fractured nose, a chipped tooth and a few lacerations are the full extent of the damage done, then that's relatively great news considering how scary the incident looked on Saturday. With how hard and awkwardly Sabourin landed on the ice, there was major concern that he could have suffered possible head trauma or a significant neck injury.

Thankfully, it looks as though disaster has been avoided.