NHL defenseman has his car fire bombed in the middle of the offseason!

A young and developing National Hockey League defenseman has just been the victim of a rather heinous crime. 

According to what are still, at least at the time of this writing, unconfirmed reports out of Slovakia, it appears that Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman Erik Cernak has just had his vehicle fire bombed in the middle of the offseason. Obviously these are very serious allegations but based on the still images that have been provided by one user on social media it does indeed appear to be the case. 

In the image you can see a very badly damaged Mercedes G 500 and it does in fact appear that the vehicle has been set ablaze and has suffered some rather significant damage as a result of the blaze. The initial reports suggest that the incident took place in the town of Kosice, Slovakia, which would make sense given that this is Cernak's hometown and it would appear to be reasonable to suggest that he would spend some part of his offseason in that location.

The most disturbing part of these reports however is that this does not appear to have been some kind of accident. All of the reports at this time are suggesting that Cernak's vehicle was set ablaze, implying that someone deliberately set fire to the vehicle, although at this time it does not appear that any suspects have been named in connection with this incident. That will be especially hard for the young man as he had seemingly invested a significant sum of money in the vehicle. 

According to initial reports the damage is estimated to be just barely under $150,000 USD, and that is a lot of money for anyone to lose over something they seemingly had no control over. Additionally Cernak is cashing in on millions of dollars in the National Hockey League but is instead earning a meager $700,000 per season, which means that the damage to his car represents a rather large portion of his current salary.

Hopefully the people responsible for this will be apprehended and will be forced to pay for the damages, but there has been no word in regards to how the investigation into this situation is proceeding.