Maple Leafs forward Cedric Pare was forced to deactivate his social media accounts this week after receiving de*th threats from Canadiens fans following knee-on-knee collision with Patrik Laine.

The hit occurred during a heated pre-season matchup between the Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs this past weekend. As Laine looked to gain the offensive zone with the puck in an attempt to create a scoring chance off of the rush, Pare attempted to disrupt the chance by making some contact. Unfortunately, that contact ended up being knee-on-knee, sending Laine crashing to the ice in a tremendous amount of pain.

The end result of the hit will see Laine sidelined for 2-3 months, which is much better than the original reported timeline, which was believed to be the entire 2024-25 season.

Following the ordeal, Pare revealed that the hit was not intentional, and that he had never wanted to injury Laine. The Canadiens winger also came forward and made some public comments on Thursday, confirming that he didn’t feel as though the knee-on-knee hit was intentional either, revealing that Pare had reached out to him via text to check in on him and offer a sincere apology.

Pare has since had to remove himself from social media, as fans in Montreal have begun uttering de*th threats to the minor leaguer this week, TSN’s Darren Dreger confirms.
“I’m told that the Toronto Maple Leafs’ security group had to intervene and disable Pare’s social media accounts based on de*th threats, and abusive comments directed at him. So, it’s one thing to have a raw rivalry, it’s another thing to cross a line.”
 

Pare did not face any supplemental discipline on the play, which is a good indicator that the Department of Player Safety took a good, long look at the play and determined that it was not intentional, nor did Pare violate any clearly written rules by attempting to make the perhaps ill-advised contact to try and disrupt the play.

Obviously, as Dreger had alluded to, there’s rivalry and then there’s taking things too far. It takes a pretty mentally unstable person to utter threats of that nature at a player over an accident during a hockey game. Hopefully Laine’s comments on the matter will help to settle the situation down, as Pare, a Quebec native, was clearly impacted very negatively in his home province due to the unfortunate play.