Colorado Avalanche fans were fuming as early as the the second period of the team’s game against the Edmonton Oilers on Tuesday, when Nathan MacKinnon was shockingly ejected from the matchup due to what referees deemed as dangerous/intentional or both. Or really, whatever the heck they thought. You can ask literally anyone, including analysts to fans, and most—if not all—of them would tell you the same thing.
In no universe should MacKinnon have been ejected from the game with a five-minute penalty plus game misconduct. Sure, it would still make fans angry if MacKinnon was enforced a two-minute penalty, but that’s a thousand times better than what actually happened.
The sequence, in my eyes, was simple. MacKinnon was skating towards Oilers goaltender Connor Ingram, trying to continue playing, and was nudged into Ingram by a player on Edmonton. As Mark Rycroft of Altitude basically said, there’s no way that MacKinnon would have intentionally run into an opposing goaltender. He was literally nudged by Edmonton. Ten times out of ten, you would see MacKinnon avoid contact with the goaltender if he wasn’t pushed/nudged, or whatever you want to call it.
That’s exactly why MacKinnon should not be suspended. For one, this was the very first game misconduct penalty of his career. He’s not a dirty player. Of course, you’ll have the odd fan of another team say the complete opposite, but if that’s the case, I’d love for them to actually prove it. When has MacKinnon ever shown anything to make him appear as a dirty player?
Even though Ingram was injured and spotted for a possible concussion, head coach Jared Bednar did not agree with the major penalty.
Now, if MacKinnon is actually issued a suspension or a fine, he’s going to appeal it. I think that the league has probably looked at it several times. If not, that would be pretty surprising, unless they know that the referee made a mistake in issuing the game misconduct. The Avalanche play the Seattle Kraken on Thursday night. My best guess is that MacKinnon won’t actually be fined, but rather warned.
Nobody truly thinks that MacKinnon did any of that on purpose, but to me, it would seem like common practice to hand down a warning to him since he’s not a repeat offender. If anything worse comes from this whole mess, it would be a big mistake by the league and whoever makes those decisions. My guess is that we’ll know more possibly by Friday.
Stay tuned.