Here is a quote from a ref on Reddit
"or perspective: I’m a high level national referee in the Netherlands, where we use the IIHF rulebook. Our rule is written a bit differently but it is, in practical effect, the same as the NHL’s.
We spend a lot of time in training seminars discussing charging. It’s probably the one rule we talk about the most. Because it’s hard to see and you probably need to understand why the rule exists as much as what the words say.
The basic gist is that: a player who travels an excessive distance to deliver a check by definition has such an unfair positional advantage over his target that this is a frequent source of severe, life threatening injury.
Why is that? Well first, vision. The player with the puck has a lot of distractions around them. Even if they’re playing “heads up” hockey, it’s very easy to lose track of any of the 9 other skaters on the ice. An opponent can take advantage of this by coming from far outside the immediate area of play, lining a guy up, and putting him in the hospital. Maybe for the rest of his life.
Second, speed differential. And this one comes into play in this hit. If the player with the puck is trying to make a play, even if they’re playing heads up and see you coming, you have such a tremendous speed differential that they cannot defend themselves at all: because of your speed, vector, and the distance you’re coming from, you have eliminated any ability on their part to use superior skating, flexibility, stick work, etc, to avoid your hit. Watching this hit, it really doesn’t matter what Evans does - he has absolutely zero ability to mitigate Scheifele’s check.
That’s the difference between a legal body check and a charge."
And EP40 is not coming with any speed at all, his opponent does , so all their reasoning about the charging penalty falls completely apart, one might think.
The Kronwall hit on Havlat can be reasoned with in this way, a clear charging, EP40:s "hit" seems not to fit in above at all
