The NHL lockout is over, so your days of relying on the KHL for your top-level hockey highlights are numbered. (You may still have to rely on lower-tier U.S. leagues to meet your personal quota of all-out brawl viewing, however.) You are probably happy about this, but we’d urge you not to sell the KHL short – it was even kind enough to provide you with this highlight as the NHL inches closer toward its return to your life. [Richard Deitsch via Hot Clicks]

Rarely have we seen six seconds of footage packed with more weirdness than those after the jump. They involve a hockey player hitting a coach with his stick…and the reactiosn make it even more bizarre.

Today in “hockey players are insane”: Jon ‘Nasty’ Mirasty, a former Golden Gloves boxer who now plays in Russia’s KHL, smiles as he’s punched in the face by Maxim Yeprev of the Metallurg Novokuznetsk. Yeah: he smiled while being punched in the face.

Yesterday, you heard about the horrific plane crash in Russia that killed 43 people, including nearly the entire roster of European hockey team Lokomotiv (the roster included some NHL veterans, including former St. Louis Blues star Pavol Demitra). Amidst the shock and sadness caused by news like that, a reality emerges – there’s a KHL season to play.

All pro athletes have put in tons of work consistently over a good portion of their lives to get where they are – and it shows. One of the reasons they’re often looked at like superheroes is that, well, some of them look like superheroes. They do things we could never dream of. They seem invincible. They’re not.