A rare butt-ending call on Josh Manson in Game 4 of the second-round series between Colorado and Minnesota was downgraded on review, later confirmed by a postgame admission, and ultimately left the NHL debating how a sequence that began with uncertainty ended with a fine but no ejection.
A rare butt-ending call in Game 4 of the second-round series between Colorado and Minnesota sparked a rulebook debate, a postgame admission, and another clash of reputations in an already tense playoff matchup.
A Rule Rarely Seen, Suddenly Revisited
For most of the modern NHL, butt-ending sits in a quiet corner of the rulebook—an infraction mentioned more often than it’s actually seen.
That changed in Game 4 of the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs between the Colorado Avalanche and the Minnesota Wild, when a chaotic sequence along the boards 7:02 into the first period brought one of hockey’s harsher stick penalties back into focus.
Avalanche defenseman Josh Manson and Wild forward Michael McCarron got tied up in a hard battle along the wall that quickly turned into a scramble on the ice. After McCarron finished a heavy check, both players went down in close quarters, sticks tangled and bodies crowded into tight space.
In that moment, Manson’s stick appeared to come up in a short motion toward McCarron’s upper body—language that fits the NHL’s definition of butt-ending, where a player uses the shaft above the top hand to jab or strike an opponent.
McCarron reacted immediately and drew the attention of officials, who initially assessed a major penalty before sending the play to video review. After a lengthy review, the call was reduced to a double minor because officials could not definitively confirm contact.
The Line Between What’s Seen And What’s Proven
Under NHL Rule 58, the distinction is straightforward on paper: confirmed contact results in a major penalty and game misconduct, while an attempted infraction—where intent is evident but contact cannot be clearly verified—results in a double minor.
That distinction ultimately decided the call. Officials ruled it an attempt, which kept Manson in the game instead of ejecting him.
But that interpretation didn’t last long.
After the game, Manson admitted he did, in fact, butt-end McCarron. That shifted the discussion from what officials could prove in real time to what was later acknowledged afterward.
The league later fined him $5,000, the maximum allowable under the collective bargaining agreement, reinforcing that the action crossed the line for supplemental discipline even if it did not lead to an in-game ejection.
Which naturally raises the obvious question: if the infraction was later confirmed, should it have been a game misconduct at the time?
There’s another layer to it as well—the call appeared to hinge heavily on McCarron’s reaction in the moment, yet no embellishment penalty or fine followed. If the league later validated the infraction while still stopping short of the harshest in-game punishment, it naturally raises questions about how consistently those situations are judged.
McCarron’s style of play also factors into how moments like this are viewed. He often finds himself in the middle of scrums and quick exchanges that are difficult to sort out in real time. That doesn’t decide penalties, but it can influence how quickly situations escalate when officials are trying to process chaos on the fly.
Reputation, Reaction, And A Familiar Pattern
The discussion quickly moved beyond the rule itself and into how players are perceived in situations like this—especially in the playoffs, where every reaction gets magnified.
McCarron again found himself at the center of that conversation. Around the league, he carries a reputation—fair or not—for exaggerating contact in scrums, something that tends to resurface whenever controversy follows him.
Michael McCarron feigning injury after getting slashed by his now-teammate.One of the more commonly referenced examples came during his time with the Nashville Predators in a post-whistle exchange with Mats Zuccarello. In that sequence, Zuccarello slashed McCarron in the leg, but McCarron reacted as if he had been hit in an entirely different area, drawing more attention to the reaction than the slash itself.
That moment has lingered as part of the perception surrounding him and the way some of these incidents are viewed afterward.
None of it changes what happened in Game 4, but it does shape how similar sequences are interpreted, especially when everything unfolds quickly.
A Call That Never Fully Settled
In the end, Game 4 didn’t really produce a clean answer so much as different versions of the same play.
For the officials, it was a double minor for an attempted infraction. For Manson, it became a postgame admission followed by a fine.
And for McCarron, it became another moment in a career that somehow keeps finding itself around scrums, controversy, and now, quite literally, a butt-end.
