Nathan MacKinnon addresses blow up with his coach.

MacKinnon discusses blow up.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 5 years ago
Nathan MacKinnon addresses blow up with his coach.
Mile High Sticking / Fansided

The Colorado Avalanche had a very public and very ugly blow up occur this week when the team's superstar forward, Nathan MacKinnon, went off on his head coach, Jared Bednar.

The blow up made headlines around the hockey world and came at the worst possible time for a talented team of players that was in the midst of a major slump( the Avalanche have picked up just 2 victories in their last 10). That being said moments like the one that we saw between MacKinnon and Bednar are often made to appear bigger than they are simply due to the nature of the coverage surrounding those incidents, especially in a sport like hockey where such behavior is frowned upon and relatively rare.

As you would expect in a situation like this, a situation where a subordinate is showing a measure of disrespect to his superior, resulted in a lot of the finger pointing being directed at the young Avalanche forward rather than his coach. In spite of the criticism however MacKinnon appears to have handled things quite well and outside of a little embarrassment he doesn't seem to have taken things all that badly considering his face was plastered all over the news. MacKinnon spoke with Sportsnet's Christine Simpson recently and was asked immediately out of the gate about the blow up with Bednar and to his credit he took full responsibility for his actions that day.

According to MacKinnon the argument stemmed over the fact that he felt the move to pull the Avalanche's goaltender should have come earlier in the game, while Bednar clearly took issue with MacKinnon attempting to direct his show. MacKinnon even confirmed the "do your job" line that many lip readers were convinced he had uttered in the direction of his coach, although he did add that it was Bednar who had told him to "worry about his job" prior to him flinging that retort back at his coach.

In spite of the fact that this could have easily created tensions between the 2 men MacKinnon says there are no hard feelings between him and his coach and that it is effectively water under the bridge. It will be interesting to see however if this flares up again at some point in the future. 

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