The heat is pressing down on my chest like a heavy wool blanket soaked in boiling water which makes no sense because it is supposed to be winter for hockey fans and yet here we are sweating through our shirts as if we have just run the fifty yard line without shoes on while carrying a stack of frozen burritos from Culver’s. I am sitting at this desk in Mukwonago where everything smells like sawdust and old beer stains and the kind of stale air you find inside a locker room that has not been cleaned since nineteen ninety eight because my wife refuses to scrub away what she calls the character building scents of authority. This is me The Ry Guy signing off on another night of officiating confusion regarding the NHL rescinding this major penalty on Nathan MacKinnon and I am telling you right now if you think this was a mistake then you have never watched a defenseman dive into a forward while wearing skates that cost more than my first vehicle which did not even make it through spring before breaking its own axel. The news came out Tuesday against the Edmonton Oilers stating that officials decided to take back the game misconduct they handed MacKinnon for interference on the goaltender Connor Ingram and I am reading this as if I am a lawyer arguing a defense in front of a jury made entirely of referees who are currently eating hot dogs at halftime but these things happen when you try to find justice in Washington D.C. without bringing your own lunch or asking someone named Michael-Vincent for help because he understands the language of bureaucracy better than anyone else I know and his eyes glaze over whenever you mention overtime rules which makes sense considering how much sugar comes out of Kwik Trip drinks during a long shift on Friday night when everyone is tired from working retail jobs where they have to smile at people who want something that does not exist in the store.
The incident involved MacKinnon going hard to the net as Brock Nelson sent him a pass and I watched this play back three times while standing by my refrigerator waiting for the water line ice machine to finish its cycle because sometimes you need cold water running through your veins when the brain starts processing that Darnell Nurse hit hip first into Nathan MacKinnon with enough force to knock off a pair of shin guards in real life and I am telling you right now from twenty years behind the whistle that this is what it looks like for momentum transfer on ice which means the goalie was pushed by gravity combined with a body check before he even touched the man who had just tipped the puck wide. The officials gave MacKinnon a major penalty for interference on the goaltender and upheld that call after video review but now they are saying mistakes happen because apparently there is an appeals process in hockey where you send your case to people wearing suits instead of stripes which I do not understand why we put men in ties over men who have stood up for six hours straight without a bathroom break just to look at a screen while the game clock ticks down. MacKinnon and the Avs were back in action Thursday night against Seattle but before that happened there was this whole conversation about whether he could avoid Connor Ingram after being hit by Darnell Nurse from behind which sounds like an impossible task unless you are made of rubber or have been trained to slide into people without using your hands at all. I remember when we used to call it body contact and not interference because the rules were written on napkins in back rooms where no one cared about protecting the goalie enough until they saw a kid from Ohio get his face smashed by an elbow during warmups which made everyone go crazy for thirty minutes while trying to find a replacement puck that had rolled under the bleachers somewhere near exit door six.
Now Michael-Vincent is calling me on speakerphone from Kwik Trip where he works part time and asks if this means MacKinnon gets his penalty back or if it just disappears like magic because there are no refunds issued for penalties in hockey unless you find a way to bribe the commissioner which I think would require bringing him a basket of local cheese curds from Culver’s but Michael-Vincent is not listening closely anymore. He says that he watched the replay on his phone while pumping gas into his truck and told me that Nurse should have gotten called for charging because diving onto someone like a linebacker in football without checking their legs first means you are trying to hurt them with intent which might be why we call it interference instead of assault but I am not sure about this legal logic because the NHL has never been known for its adherence to actual law. Blake is currently sitting on my couch watching reruns of game highlights and he asks if Connor Ingram got cut badly enough that he needs stitches or bandages from a first aid kit in the glove box which makes me laugh out loud because I know Blake thinks medical treatment happens inside your vehicle rather than at a hospital but it does prove one point about how casual we are becoming about player injuries. MacKinnon told The Denver Post that General Manager Chris McFarland asked them to review it and they took it away which means the officials changed their minds after watching the same video footage for five minutes straight without getting tired or thirsty because sometimes I wonder if my own eyesight deteriorates faster than theirs when I am staring at a puck flying through air at eighty miles per hour.
I need to take this back to where we started with Murray joining Vikings and how that was about elevating their QB room which sounds like something you would say for hockey too but the problem is quarterbacks run around without padding while players in pads collide into each other so much harder than a quarterback gets hit during a snap situation. One-Ry Out goes out there when I am done typing this paragraph because my fingers are numb from being cold and then hot again after touching metal tables at Kwik Trip where you stand for ten minutes waiting for the fryer to heat up enough to make fries taste like grease but that is what customers expect so why not get used to it now. The NHL rescinded the major penalty on Nathan MacKinnon because they realized he was pushed into Ingram by Nurse and this sounds reasonable until you remember all those times when players fake injuries just to stop play after a hard hit which makes me wonder if Connor Ingram is actually okay or if he is playing with a concussion that nobody wants to talk about publicly for fear of liability lawsuits. I saw one case in Madison where they had two teams arguing over who scored the winning goal during overtime and ended up pulling out a coin toss because neither team could agree on what happened when the puck went into the net behind the goaltender but at least we did not have to rescind any penalties for that game just like how I do not need to go back on my call about interference if you ask me nicely.
Nurse diving onto him with his head connecting on MacKinnon hip is a dangerous move because heads are supposed to stay up and hips are low which means there is an angle mismatch when people collide like two cars hitting each other at forty miles per hour without brakes applied properly. Ingram skated off on his own with a cut on his forehead
One-Ry Out.