I'm not a Vegas fan. I am a lifelong Blues fan. I don't give a ****e who won between a 2 and a 3 seed in a different division.
I have no rooting interest and it was a terrible call. All you are giving is the same attenuated bullsh!te argument that Ohio Taint fans made in 2003 (yeah, well the game never should have gone to overtime if they would have called a penalty earlier in the 4th quarter).
The refs did not see the cross-checking penalty at the time it happened. The refs used the blood on the ice to INCORRECTLY assess a major cross-checking penalty for (according to their explanation) a cross-check to the face that never happened.
I don't give a ****e if they called a penalty on the other player, but he din't "throw a dude's head into the ice". The play, while rough, was an unfortunate circumstance. Guys fall down all the time. They do wear helmets. Sometimes, even in spite of all of the gear, a significant injury occurs.
The cross-check was AT WORST a 2 minute penalty, and as someone has already pointed out, those kinds of cross-checks happen on about half of all faceoffs. The pulldown was AT WORST a 2 minute penalty. It is tragic and unfortunate that a serious injury occurred, but every single day you see some sort of penalty which COULD HAVE led to a serious injury, and it is very rare to give a 5-minute major. VERY rare.
I don't care one bit for either San Jose OR Vegas. They can both burn in ****. But we cannot sit around and allow the refs to call penalties they didn't see, or to call penalties simply for blood on the ice. You want more accuracy, put more refs on the ice or behind the glass, expand replay, hand out massive fines for hard hits, whatever.
But allowing a ref to retroactively call a 5-minute major for a penalty he did not see, and then to claim that something happened that did not happen...that's just bush league.
