There was no love lost between Josh Manson and Michael McCarron after a first-period sequence saw the Avalanche\u2019s veteran defenseman end up with a four-minute double minor for butt-ending.<\/p>\n
Manson absorbed a hit from McCarron, and the Wild forward ended up falling on him. The two tussled on the ice for a few moments, with Manson getting a headlock hold. As they started to separate, Manson appeared to butt-end McCarron around the ear.<\/p>\n
The penalty led to a power-play goal for Minnesota, but the Avalanche ended up winning 5-2 to take a commanding 3-1 series lead.<\/p>\n
At the first intermission, McCarron fired at Manson during an interview with ESPN\u2019s P.K. Subban. <\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, you played against Josh. He\u2019s a dirty player. He\u2019s always been,\u201d McCarron said. \u201cSurprised he got away with only a 4-minute. I\u2019m happy he\u2019s still in the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the game, Manson met with a few media members, myself included. He was first asked how he felt, as this was Manson\u2019s first game back since April 23. His response: \u201cGood. You can just get to the question you want to ask me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then it was asked, and his response followed. <\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, he hits me, but then he lands on me. So I didn\u2019t really like that, to be honest with you,\u201d Manson said. \u201cWe\u2019re in a scrum, and I just, I mean, I butt ended him. Was it on purpose? Was that my intention? Absolutely not. My intention wasn\u2019t to butt-end him. <\/p>\n
\u201cDid I want to punch him in the head? I did want to punch him in the head, yeah. I was trying to give him a smack because I didn\u2019t like that he landed on me. I didn\u2019t think that was fully necessary. But, you know, I served my four-minute penalty. They looked at it and, yeah, like I said, it wasn\u2019t my intention to butt-end him in the face. It was more trying to smack him in the head. I think I just lost awareness of where the grip was.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manson was also asked about the comments McCarron made on ESPN. He was unaware of them until we brought them up.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s fine if he wants to call me a dirty player. He can just look at my history. I mean, it\u2019s been 13 years and I haven\u2019t been suspended yet,\u201d Manson said. \u201cSo obviously, I\u2019m not that dirty. You know what I mean. I think there are other guys in the league that are doing more. But was that the cleanest play? No. I mean, was it purposeful? No, it wasn\u2019t purposeful either. But like I said, I served my time. They scored on it, so I mean, benefited them. But, yeah, that\u2019s his perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCarron didn\u2019t let it go after the game either. He continued his rant about Manson. <\/p>\n
\u201cI blew him up, and he grabs me and pulls me on top of him,\u201d McCarron said. \u201cHe\u2019s a dirty player. He took his butt-end and clearly butt-ended me in the face. I don\u2019t know how it\u2019s not five minutes. I think the rule book says it\u2019s a five-minute if you butt-end someone in the face. He\u2019s a dirty player. He\u2019s always been. Not very well-respected.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was no easy-to-find history between the two players before this sequence.<\/p>\n
Please consider donating to the Colorado Hockey Now Playoff Travel Fund\u00a0to help our beat writer continue to provide in-the-room coverage like this from road games in Minnesota and beyond:\u00a0PAYPAL<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0VENMO<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There was no love lost between Josh Manson and Michael McCarron after a first-period sequence saw the Avalanche\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5116],"tags":[193,192,144,5277,5,1544,1708,4],"class_list":["post-572979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-colorado-avalanche","tag-avalanche","tag-colorado","tag-colorado-avalanche","tag-coloradoavalanche","tag-hockey","tag-josh-manson","tag-michael-mccarron","tag-nhl"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116561015202591766","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}