Jonathan Drouin rubbing teammates the wrong way in practice.

The Montreal Canadiens are having what I can only describe as an embarrassingly bad season and it may be that the cracks are starting to show among the players on that squad.

Journalist Patrick Friolet of RDS published a video on Sunday that appears to show a brief altercation between Canadiens forward Jonathan Drouin and veteran Habs defenseman Brett Kulak. Although the end result of this was just a brief scuffle between the two teammates, at one point it appears as though things came very close to getting out of hand.

Drouin was playing a little loose with his stick during what appeared to be a routine practice drill, giving teammates what were admittedly some pretty light looking taps on the gloves with that stick. One of those slashes however did not sit so well with one teammate, so much so in fact that it looked like Kulak was going to come back at Drouin with a big two handed chop of his stick.

Drouin didn't seem to be skating with much intensity and as a result was a little behind on the play when he swung his stick around and appeared to catch Kulak on the glove. Kulak quickly swung around and raised his stick in both hands, even starting the motion of baseball style swing before stopping short of hitting Drouin.

I might have brushed it off as Kulak merely being playful, but the veteran defenseman then got up in Drouin's face and the two men began pushing and shoving, with Drouin even seemingly throwing a weak punch at Kulak's face with his gloves still on his hands. Following that particular blow Drouin quickly skated away from the exchange with Kulak, as the Habs defenseman stared him down while skating away.

The fact that the Canadiens have just seven wins over thiry-one games played this season is no doubt a contributing factor here, and frankly I don't think anyone would blame players for being on edge at all times during such a horrible season. Add to that the fact that they are all under the intense scrutiny of the Montreal media in one of the most rabid hockey markets on the planet, and you've got all the ingredients for a potential blow up like this one.

Thankfully this time it appears cooler heads prevailed in the end.