MacKinnon slashes a referee in 5-1 loss to the Bruins

In case you missed it last night, Colorado Avalanche superstar Nathan MacKinnon raised some eyebrows across the hockey world when he appeared to slash a linesman in his team's 5-1 loss to the Boston Bruins.

Here's the play in question:

It looks to me more like MacKinnon is trying to slash Tomas Nosek (#92) on the Bruins and simply misses, but there are reports out there that NHL Player Safety will be reviewing the video and that MacKinnon could be looking at a fine or a suspension.

For what it's worth, former Sportnet reporter Nick Kypreos is reporting that there will be no fine or suspension for MacKinnon.

As a reminder, this infraction earned Antoine Vermette a 10 game suspension back in 2017 for this abuse of an official:

To me, this and the MacKinnon example are so wildly different. Vermette is clearly angry that the linesman dropped the puck before he was set and he lashed out like an immature brat. In MacKinnon's case, I truly feel like it was an accident. But, at the same time you have to be responsible with your stick and if you slash a linesman... well... you slashed a linesman. It'll be interesting to see what the fallout from this ends up being.