No, stuff like that doesn't happen when you have a stick that's too short. He couldn't make the move because he couldn't control the blade closer to his body. When you have a long stick, you have less room to pull your elbow back, which means your control gets much more limited the closer the puck gets to your feet, especially when you have a low lie like Aho does, which means only the tip of the blade is going to be on the ice close in, and it's easy for a puck to slip under. Less range of motion + only a fraction of the blade able to contact the puck = pucks slipping off of blades.
The standard rule is that the elbow for your top hand should be at a right angle to allow you the greatest range of motion pulling your blade back towards your feet or to reach forward. Most NHLers go for an obtuse angle, and use sticks much shorter in relation to their bodies than you would expect, because it allows them to handle pucks much closer to their feet, catching passes between their feet, close in stickhandling, etc. A long stick will handcuff you in those situations.
A long stick gives you reach, which allows you to catch pucks far from you, helps with takeaways, and makes it much easier to break up an opponent's stickwork on defense, and by giving you more leverage, gives you a harder shot. There certainly can be advantages to it- but when your top elbow is in that acute angle to start, there's only so much more room to close it, which means that your range of motion can get extremely limited when you have the puck close to your body.
)
