What is a high stick anyway?

HockeyVirus

Woll stan.
Nov 15, 2020
16,078
33,966
Last night this is a good play, challenge denied



Tonight this wins the challenge



Are these not basically identical? Why is one a goal and one is not?
 
Feel this frustration seething through your veins as your blood pressure rises to dangerous levels?

That’s what happens when you try to micromanage a hockey game with 10K slow-mo and measuring things down to the millimeter.

In real time those are both close calls where a couple extra inches of altitude made no difference on the play.

Embrace traditional officiating, you’ll live longer.
 
The Knies one (Marner) is clearly over the shoulders. The Matthews one is probably over, but ridiculously close and hard to tell. Move on.
 
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Maybe it wasn't conclusive that Matthews touched it. That was my thought watching it live. But yeah, this nitpicking is crazy. The ref kept the play going, he was right there, so be it if it was an inch above Matthews' shoulders. It slows the game down too much with these crazy challenges. Matt Duchene scored a goal that a toddler could have seen was offside back in 2014 or so. Even Duchene was looking around shocked. But so what? It isn't as if these sorts of plays happen frequently at this obvious of a play. A toenail not being at the blueline is just a "bang-bang" play. It doesn't change much at all. I am not a huge fan of coach's challenges like this.
 
both calls were “right”. IMO had nothing to do with the goal overall, and in instances where there’s a blatant miss I get it, but the refs were 5 feet away max on both and missed them. Kind of kills the game to go back and overturn a goal. Will we soon be reviewing missed high stick penalties and icings? Cause those are equally as bad. Or missed penalties that overturn a goal and you get a goal called back and end up on the PK?
 
The problem is the refs have angles they don't show on the TV.

They should give us the angles they used to make the determination after the game. For some reason, they don't care to and then wonder why people question the review team afterwards.
 
The problem is the refs have angles they don't show on the TV.

They should give us the angles they used to make the determination after the game. For some reason, they don't care to and then wonder why people question the review team afterwards.
The Kings' broadcast had an ice-level view that showed Matthews contacting the puck clearly above his shoulder (not the one the poster above linked to). Seems like the officials did not have that one, or if they did, they sure didn't watch it carefully enough.
 
The Kings' broadcast had an ice-level view that showed Matthews contacting the puck clearly above his shoulder (not the one the poster above linked to). Seems like the officials did not have that one, or if they did, they sure didn't watch it carefully enough.

Or they had another angle that showed it at or below his shoulder.

That’s the problem, depending on the angle it’ll look different. The ref who watched it from 2 feet away said no high stick so it can’t be as blatant as LA fans keep pretending.
 
Or they had another angle that showed it at or below his shoulder.

That’s the problem, depending on the angle it’ll look different. The ref who watched it from 2 feet away said no high stick so it can’t be as blatant as LA fans keep pretending.
That would defy physics then considering that the ice-level view shown on the broadcast was as close to even in height as you’re going to get and it clearly showed contact above the shoulder.
 

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