Everyone understands that even blatant infractions can be missed in a fast-paced hockey game, regardless of how many officials are on the ice. We're also not here to blame the officials for last night's loss. The Flyers had a lousy game, and the Blackhawks played some great hockey, plenty deserving of a win. But for Flyers fans, it was still hard to see nothing come of a dangerously sloppy play by Chicago defenseman Duncan Keith, in which Keith swung his stick up and caught Danny Briere just below the eye. [video below]
That none of the on-ice officials saw it is surprising, although we honestly don't doubt that the play was simply missed. This video doesn't show the vantages of the two referees, but it's hard to imagine that they, like the linesman who dropped the puck, had their backs to the play. If they'd have seen it, they'd have called it; it's only frustrating because it's so unlikely that a high-stick that blatant would be seen by no one despite being so close to the play, which had just begun with a faceoff.
It's anybody's guess what Keith's intentions were there. Maybe lifting the stick to slow Briere down? Briere wasn't carrying the puck nor even looking at it, and Keith's first body motion was toward the puck, not to cover Briere. Maybe he wanted to just quickly get a stick up near Danny's grill as part of what looked like a Blackhawks' goal of putting anything they could on Briere and Ville Leino to slow them down in the series.
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What do you think?
Briere would thankfully be OK, returning to the bench as soon as he could get his face stitched up. It's pointless to get caught up in what might have been had the refs seen Keith's stickwork in real-time. A 2-, 4-, or 5-minute penalty could've changed a 5-3 game dramatically, but it's over now. We're still a little curious as to what Keith was intending to do with that stick at the time.
After the game, Briere looked pretty much like he'd just gone a couple rounds with Floyd Mayweather but remained upbeat.
“I feel all right,” he said, his eye black and blue, yet still wide
open.Asked if he would play in Game 6, Briere said, “Oh, yeah.
Definitely.”
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He is a hockey player after all.
Photo by Getty Images
Video of Duncan Keith drilling Danny Briere in the face during game five of the Stanley Cup Finals: