Is there a problem between Jared Bednar and Nathan MacKinnon?

We all saw what looked like a moment of confrontation Wednesday night, between Nathan  MacKinnon and Jared Bednar, on the Avalanche bench with about eight seconds left in a 5-3 loss to the Calgary Flames.

Sportsnet hockey analyst Kelly Hrudey said he thought MacKinnon said “just do your job” to his coach. MacKinnon slammed his water bottle against the bench, then, in a moment of unintentional comedy, fell backward off his seat and had to be pulled back up by teammate Gabe Landeskog. Bednar, for his part, appeared to grimace after being yelled at by MacKinnon.

It’s all right here in this clip:

There was no traveling Denver media at the game last night. Sign of the times. I’ll be at the final three games of the Avs road trip, starting with Saturday’s game in Montreal. I’ll be at their practice Friday in Montreal. The Avs have an off day Thursday. So, nobody appears to have asked MacKinnon or Bednar about this yet.

My take on this? While my inclination is to say this isn’t a big deal, that it was just a heated moment at the end of another frustrating loss and blew over quickly, we don’t quite know for sure just yet. A player getting into it with a coach on the bench is very rare in hockey. Hockey people are very well trained in keeping any possible internal strife away from the cameras.

So, while I think this is probably nothing, it could be something. Most likely, both parties are likely to say something like “Hey, sometimes families have little arguments from time to time, but there’s no problem here.”

But could this linger? Could a rift develop between the team’s best player and the coach? Is there a rift already? MacKinnon does NOT take losing well, and what you saw on the bench is something we media people have seen in a variation of form in the dressing room after losses. He can slam stuff around and isn’t exactly chatty with the press after a loss. Which is fine. But yelling at a coach on the bench is a different matter.

Guess we’ll have to wait and see on all this. Obviously, there’s a lot of frustration right now around the team. The Avs have lost eight of their last nine games and are perilously close to falling out of the Western Conference playoff picture.  The biggest problem of late has been the goaltending, which, to be kind, has been brutal.

Right now, all anybody wants is a victory. But the road isn’t going to get any easier, with road games in Montreal and Toronto, before the trip finishes against last-place Ottawa.

We’ll see what develops, starting with that Friday practice in Montreal.