Was Eakin's 5min major right call?

[Ted Hoffman]

I would confer with the linesman and my fellow referee and not take a wild guess.

And in that situation, the only linesman you can really rely on is the one who wasn't dropping the puck at the faceoff, because that guy was staring back at the puck and couldn't possibly have seen any of what happened. Meanwhile, the other linesman is responsible for watching the blue line; when the puck is cleanly won back to the defenseman, he's got to be paying attention to whether the puck gets near the blue line such that he has to figure out whether it's still in or not. If he's seeing any of the play in the faceoff area, he's seeing it with peripheral vision and he might well not be able to see the cross-check to the chest by Eakin anyway depending on his position relative to Pavelski.

So, that leaves both referees - one of which was clearly shielded [and who's probably more focused on the puck since it's in his area] and the other who might have also been blocked by all the bodies moving after the faceoff - neither of which signaled a penalty up through the point that they blew the play dead because Pavelski was down on the ice hurt. At best, they're getting info from one linesman on the other side of the ice whose primary task at that point in time isn't to help watch off the play; at worst, they're seeing blood on the ice and taking a wild guess.

 

[hairylikebear]

Whether or not you believe the penalty call was correct, it's important to understand that the mistake did not actually create that much advantage for San Jose. Based on data from naturalstattrick.com, the league 5v4 PP goal scoring rate this year was 6.69 G/60 min. That's 0.557 G over the 5 minute PP, quite a bit less than the 4 that Vegas conceded. That's kind of like 0.557 extra xGF if you're into that sort of thing, even though that stat is calculated completely differently.

That's assuming, though, that the play didn't deserve any penalty at all. Given that most people seem to agree that a 2 minute minor was deserved, at the very least, the refs only gave the Sharks 3 minutes of extra PP time. So in fact, over 3 minutes of extra PP time, that's only 0.334G. They could make this mistake 3 times in the same game and it would only just match the impact of a single blown goalie interference call.

One thing I hope that people recognize as time goes on is that San Jose deserved to win that game and series. They didn't get it handed to them by the refs.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

It was only the right call, by the rulebook, if it caused a significant injury. Otherwise its only a 2 minute minor.

I'll leave it up to everyone else to determine if Pavelski's injury was significant.

OK, I'll throw out an example from back in the past and we'll see how well this line of thinking stands.

In a game back in 2008, Clarke MacArthur got tangled up with Olli Jokinen on a play in the corner; Jokinen put a check on MacArthur which caused him to fall. As MacArthur tried to get up, he took the skates out from under Jokinen who fell awkwardly; Jokinen's skate came up and clipped Richard Zednik in the neck, cutting his carotid artery. [I don't think we need a poll to decide if Zednik's injury was significant, nor do I think anyone is going to attempt to argue it wasn't significant.]

I mean, there was no intent to trip and certainly no intent to cause injury, but it's pretty clear that MacArthur caused Jokinen to fall and Jokinen's awkward fall happened to clip his unsuspecting teammate and cause a significant injury. So, by the arguments raised by some here - that outcome should dictate severity and chance or bad luck should play zero role in determining the call, guys have to be responsible for their actions, etc. - shouldn't MacArthur have gotten 5+GM for Zednik's injury? Because Zednik very obviously gets cut by Jokinen, and Jokinen's fall is very clearly caused by MacArthur, and even if MacArthur has zero intention of causing Jokinen to fall awkwardly in any manner his action is responsible for causing Zednik's injury.

Because for all the "outcome needs to be applied" crowd: if the answer is "no" then you're saying outcome really doesn't matter as much as you claim, that there's some element of judgment that needs to come into play, that sometimes "bad luck happens" and that maybe there's a role to try and judge a play based on intent in some fashion. [Which it should.] If you say "yes" you're saying that anything that happens that results in injury should be an automatic 5+GM ... which then means "a slash that breaks a stick which 45 seconds later happens to get caught in a player's skates and cause him to fall down and get seriously injured" should be 5+GM because the injury doesn't happen without the slash breaking the stick and causing that guy to have to drop his stick, even though it should be obvious to everyone else that the slash had zero intention of causing someone to get hurt.

And I don't know about anyone else, but that's one hell of a jump to make in enforcing the rules.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

One thing I hope that people recognize as time goes on is that San Jose deserved to win that game and series. They didn't get it handed to them by the refs.

No, they didn't. They took advantage of an opportunity given, whether correctly or erroneously [which is what we're all debating] and earned the Game 7 win and series win from it, but they didn't deserve to win that series. They didn't deserve anything.

 

[spiny norman]

Lopsided result.