A Finnish Hockey Team's Mascot Is Getting Accused Of Injuring Player

There's a hockey mascot accused of injuring a player and you might be stunned to learn that it isn't Gritty.

In fact, we can clear every NHL mascot because this incident happened over in Europe.

Sm-Liiga is the top league in Finland and on Thursday night the league's top team, Tappara Tampere, was playing host to another club called TPS Turku.

Tappara helped themselves to a 4-1 win, but one moment in the game caught some attention over on Reddit.

A user by the name of "uusrikas" posted a video on the subreddit r/hockey showing a play that proved to be a bit controversial.

The video — which you can see slowed down below — shows a Tappara player checking TPS player Jimi Suomi into the glass. That's pretty routine, but according to this poster, Suomi suffered an injury on the play.

Notice anything? Perhaps the giant-headed dude on the other side of the glass? That would be Tappara's mascot. 

His name is Tapsu, and here's a video of him running laps through the stands… because why not?

According to the Reddit post (as well as some complaints I've seen on X written in Finnish) TPS believes that as Suomi was being checked, the Tappara mascot was leaning on the glass.

Now, if you've ever sat at the glass for a pro hockey game, you know there's some give. If you weren't aware of that you will be the first time some gets ridden into the glass and your $15 beer that was sitting on the dasher gets turned into a puddle.

So, what some believe is that the mascot leaning on the glass prevented it from giving, which helps protect the players.

Was there malicious intent? I can't imagine there was, but who knows how this one will play out?