William Nylander the victim of one of the worst penalty calls of the season
Once upon a time, the Battle of Ontario was a game you'd have circled on your calendar, due to the competitive, hard-fought, feisty battles that the Leafs and Senators would find themselves in. There's still excitement in the season series, but as the game has shifted to more of a skill-based game, we're seeing less and less big hits, fights and post-whistle scrums.
Last night in Ottawa, there were just 3 penalty calls in the entire game - and two of them were pretty chintzy. This one on Luke Schenn for simply finishing his check on Tim Stutzle:
And this one on William Nylander for what the official deemed to be "hooking":
Now, neither of these calls is particularly worthy of a penalty, but the Nylander one was especially bad. Nylander may have been reaching a bit, but clearly makes only stick-on-stick contact and doesn't even come to within 3 or 4 inches of Stutzle's hands.
I know officials aren't always going to get it right, but I really do wish that some of these plays were reviewable sometimes. In this specific instance, it didn't really hurt the Leafs, as the Sens did not convert on the power play, but had this been something that the officials called in an important playoff game, I'm sure we'd all be livid and that there would be a great deal of dialogue on the subject.
| POLL | ||
AVRIL 2 | 76 ANSWERS William Nylander the victim of one of the worst penalty calls of the season Did the officials get this call right? | ||
| No, this was not a penalty | 72 | 94.7 % |
| Yes, it was too close to the hands | 4 | 5.3 % |
| List of polls | ||
