Coronal mass ejections are a thing. So yes, of course the sun can and does eject chunks of its mass, and the way it does so is very similar to what happened here: a large looping filament of plasma called a "Prominence" lost integrity and snapped apart, ejecting mass away from the sun's surface. The real surprise here is that the ejected plasma got sucked into a polar vortex, not that it was ejected in the first place.