Athletic trainer Kevin Elliott tends to Sidney Crosby after Crosby was butt-ended by the Islanders' J-G Pageau.
Sidney Crosby was still pretty annoyed about one play following the Penguins' 5-4 overtime loss to the Islanders tonight here at UBS Arena.
"I mean, it's a butt-end," he told me. "Unfortunately, they didn't see it."
Crosby was sidelined for a couple of minutes after taking a stick to the torso from J-G Pageau off a faceoff. Crosby won the draw, and Pageau responded by jabbing the end of his stick into Crosby's torso:
To be clear, that's not a spear. A spearing penalty specifically involves the blade of the stick. That's a textbook butt-end penalty, which the NHL defines as "the action whereby a player uses the shaft of the stick, above the upper hand, to check an opposing player in any manner or jabs or attempts to jab an opposing player with this part of the stick."
While Crosby was in the locker room, Dan Muse was going back and forth with officials, seemingly arguing about the lack of a penalty. I asked Muse afterward what he saw there and what explanation he got.
"I thought there was a penalty on the play, they said there wasn't a penalty on the play," Muse said. "I definitely thought there was a penalty on the play. The video showed it pretty clear. (Crosby) is not going to go down like that unless something happened. So, they missed it. Nothing I can do now."
Never heard of butt-ending as a penalty? You'd be forgiven. Butt-ending is one of the least-called penalties in the NHL. Not long ago, a Reddit user scraped the data from all 105,639 penalties called between 2010-2021, and butt-ending was called five times. For whatever reason, it's rarely enforced. And in a game as tight as this one, that non-call could prove to be a difference-maker in the end.
THE ASYLUM
How was the butt-end penalty missed?
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Athletic trainer Kevin Elliott tends to Sidney Crosby after Crosby was butt-ended by the Islanders' J-G Pageau.
Sidney Crosby was still pretty annoyed about one play following the Penguins' 5-4 overtime loss to the Islanders tonight here at UBS Arena.
"I mean, it's a butt-end," he told me. "Unfortunately, they didn't see it."
Crosby was sidelined for a couple of minutes after taking a stick to the torso from J-G Pageau off a faceoff. Crosby won the draw, and Pageau responded by jabbing the end of his stick into Crosby's torso:
To be clear, that's not a spear. A spearing penalty specifically involves the blade of the stick. That's a textbook butt-end penalty, which the NHL defines as "the action whereby a player uses the shaft of the stick, above the upper hand, to check an opposing player in any manner or jabs or attempts to jab an opposing player with this part of the stick."
While Crosby was in the locker room, Dan Muse was going back and forth with officials, seemingly arguing about the lack of a penalty. I asked Muse afterward what he saw there and what explanation he got.
"I thought there was a penalty on the play, they said there wasn't a penalty on the play," Muse said. "I definitely thought there was a penalty on the play. The video showed it pretty clear. (Crosby) is not going to go down like that unless something happened. So, they missed it. Nothing I can do now."
Never heard of butt-ending as a penalty? You'd be forgiven. Butt-ending is one of the least-called penalties in the NHL. Not long ago, a Reddit user scraped the data from all 105,639 penalties called between 2010-2021, and butt-ending was called five times. For whatever reason, it's rarely enforced. And in a game as tight as this one, that non-call could prove to be a difference-maker in the end.
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