This was already a miserable night for the Seattle Kraken. A 6-2 beating by the Vegas Golden Knights is bad enough on its own. But the detail that now hangs over the game is far uglier: Jared McCann appeared to shove linesman Travis Toomey from the Kraken bench during a post-whistle scrum.
That is not the sort of clip a team wants attached to its name, especially when the discussion turns from a lopsided defeat to whether a player has crossed into Department of Player Safety territory. As Josh Smith put it, Jared McCann may have a Department of Player Safety problem. That is not idle drama. Under Rule 40, deliberate contact with an official can bring a game misconduct and possibly more, even if the punishment was not called on the ice.
The non-call does not make this go away
The important point is simple: the fact that no penalty was assessed during the game does not settle the issue. The automatic Physical Abuse of Officials penalty does not apply without that in-game call, but that is not the same as saying McCann is in the clear. The league’s standard is intent, and intent is exactly where this gets uncomfortable.
That distinction matters. This is not about whether the contact looked accidental from a distance. It is about whether the league believes deliberate physical contact with Travis Toomey occurred. If it did, then the discussion changes fast. Suddenly this is not just a nasty moment in a bad loss. It becomes a disciplinary matter with real consequences attached.
And that is the problem for Seattle. The Kraken already came out of the game with a 6-2 defeat to explain. Now they may also have to answer questions about discipline, control and judgement. When a bench-side scrum ends with a possible shove at an official, there is no neat way to spin it. The video will decide how serious this gets, but the optics are already poor.
It is worth remembering that these situations tend to travel quickly from the immediate chaos of the night into the colder logic of Player Safety. If the league decides the contact was deliberate, the conversation becomes far bigger than one frustrated sequence in one game. The Kraken would be dealing with a reputation issue on top of a scoreboard problem.
That is why Smith’s warning lands so cleanly. Jared McCann may have a Department of Player Safety problem, and the Seattle Kraken may have a much broader discipline problem if this is judged the wrong way. A bad loss can be shrugged off. A possible shove involving an official cannot be.
