Ryan Graves shares gruesome photo after taking MacKinnon's skate to the face.

Due to all of the positives that you can find in and around the sport of hockey it can be easy to forget at times that, at its core, it is one of the most dangerous sports of the modern era. After all you have large men traveling at high rates of speed on an icy and slippery playing surface with what amounts to daggers strapped to their boots, all while firing off a frozen piece of rubber so fast that at times it reaches speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour.

This week we were served up a reminder of just how dangerous hockey can be when 26 year old National Hockey League defenseman Ryan Graves had a very close call of his own. Graves, who currently plays for the New Jersey Devils, was facing off against his old team, the Colorado Avalanche, on Thursday night when he was struck in the face by the skate of Avalanche star forward and former teammate Nathan MacKinnon.

The play was entirely accidental and there was absolutely no ill intent on the part of MacKinnon but, as you can see from the numerous replays in this short clip, that did little to help Graves' face when it came to being struck by MacKinnon's skate. 

As MacKinnon fell to the ice his leg kicked up into the air and struck Graves under the chin, rocking his head backwards and giving us a pretty good indication of just how hard he had been struck by the skate. Fortunately thanks to the angle of MacKinnon's fall the skate did not come directly towards Graves and instead appeared to angle away from him, otherwise we might be talking about a much more serious injury.

Graves himself has now shared an image of just how bad the damage to his face has been as a result of the cut from MacKinnon's skate, publishing a photograph of the aftermath of his injuries to his Instagram account. As you can see from the photograph, Graves took a pretty good kick on the chin.

Thankfully it looks like he's going to be just fine.