OTTAWA—The finger, god, the finger. You can see it now, if you saw it then, pulsing in your memory. The finger, if you saw it, will hang in your brain, a bloody grotesquery, something that can make you shiver even if you’re an NHL player and you have seen untold horrors, dental and otherwise. Marc Methot’s finger, slashed by Sidney Crosby, is a blot on your memory. Ugh. Gross.

“I’ve seen some bad skate cuts, and lacerations: they are what they are, but that, the way it occurred there, was something I’ve never seen,” says Ottawa Senators centre Zack Smith. “I’d like to forget it.”

“You could see the bone,” says Penguins winger Carter Rowney. “The bone.”

“I was in a game with Richard Zednik when he slit his throat in Buffalo,” says Ottawa winger Clarke MacArthur. “That was worse.”

The finger became famous on March 23, when Crosby slashed at Methot in a way that you see dozens of times per game, a backhand slash, not too hard, on a zone entry. Methot reacted right away. And then he felt something else.

Look, this whole story is about something gross. Sorry.

“I couldn’t feel it,” says Methot, who scored a goal and added an assist in Ottawa’s 5-1 win in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference final against Pittsburgh Wednesday night, giving Ottawa a 2-1 lead in the series. “All I could feel was skin hanging over, and that’s why I grabbed Sid, I wanted to talk to him.”

OK. Go on.

“And all of a sudden as I was grabbing him I felt something move in the glove, so I let him go because I kind of panicked, and I skated away. And I took the glove off.”

Oh god. The end of his pinky finger nearly came off. So gross.

“Yeah, Meth’s was bad, like just the way — I mean, the camera shows it perfectly,” MacArthur says. “Dangling, literally hanging on by a thread. Ugh.” MacArthur, a professional hockey player, does a full-body shiver.

“I’m not really good with blood,” Senators defenceman Chris Wideman says. “Yeah, that was a tough one. In college my D partner, Will Weber, got cut on the neck with a skate, that was a tough one to see. But Meth’s was right up there with the worst one I’ve seen live. They were showing it on the video board and stuff, and he was like, showing guys in the room (a picture) and they were all crowded around watching, and, no. I get sick thinking about it.”

Wait, you’re a hockey player who isn’t good with blood?

“Yeah, I had to get stitches last night and it took a little longer than it probably should have,” says Wideman, his sheepish smile nudging up the stitches above his lip. “The boys were giving me trouble for it.”

Still, it takes a lot for most players to be squeamish, but Methot’s bloody half-dismembered stump qualified. If you thought it was bad to watch, I mean, imagine what it was like if it was you.

“People don’t understand how much it hurts, because of the nerve endings under there,” says Methot, whose pinky is still purple and scarred and numb at the end. “I couldn’t sleep for at least a week and a half, because it was just throbbing, throbbing, and then I would finally pass out for a little bit, and wake up. The pain was incredible. I’ve broken my jaw, I’ve had some bad injuries, but this one was by far the worst.”

It’s a funny thing, in the horrific sense: a pinky injury being the most painful thing that a rugged NHL player has dealt with. But Methot was on Tylenol 3s, which are used for wisdom teeth and more, and it was still agony. He missed 10 games over 23 days before returning in Game 2 of the first round against Boston, wearing a special glove that holds the pinky and ring fingers together. The genial defenceman is best known as Erik Karlsson’s big reliable designated driver, but he is at two playoff goals now, and his Game 3 drew rave reviews.

“I thought that was his best game all year long: he was a monster on the puck, he was punishing on their busy down low, and he was rewarded with a goal and an assist,” Senators winger Bobby Ryan says. “He didn’t score all year, so we knew he was due.”

The finger did start a war of words, of course. Ottawa owner Eugene Melnyk, our country’s most reliably erratic NHL owner, called Crosby “a whiner beyond belief” and called for a suspension, and Crosby, who avoids controversy the way an actual penguin avoids sea lions, said of Melnyk, “He just likes to hear himself talk.”

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But Methot pretty much stayed out of it. He knows how the game works. He just would have appreciated an apology, is all.

“I mean, I don’t have any ill will towards anyone — it’s hockey, and I know he didn’t mean to really try to cut my finger off,” says Methot. “But it happened, and here I am. So . . .”

Here he is, and his Senators are two wins from the Cup final. Maybe that will help people forget the finger, and all that. Maybe the whole thing will get everyone good and distracted, and we can never speak of this again.

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