John Tortorella almost shit a brick on Thursday night when Ryan Poehling was wiped out by Maxim Tsyplakov in the first period of the Flyers/Isles game. I’ve watched this probably 25 times and read more than a hundred comments from legit hockey people on social media, and they seem to be split on whether or not this should have been a penalty. The refs ruled that it was clean:

That final angle there shows shoulder just barely hitting shoulder before the head contact. That must be what the refs were looking at.

But here’s the thing – clean hit or not, it conservatively looks like 10% of the impact takes place on the shoulder and the other 90% is to the head. Poehling went down hard on the ice, needed help getting up, left the game, and didn’t return. The way the rule is written, refs are asked to determine if the head was “the main point of contact” and whether or not that contact was avoidable. There are other caveats that allow wiggle room for timing, angle, and whether or not the hit was made “squarely through the opponent’s body.”

For what it’s worth, Kevin Kurz and Arthur Staple at The Athletic think this might result in a hearing:

Regardless, good rally by the Flyers to win. After this nonsense, Joel Farabee was whistled for a weak retaliatory slash, then TK was slashed on the first Islanders goal, but no call. They kept their composure for a 5-3 victory and now are on a four-game point streak.


EDIT – he got 3 games: