12/29/2005

Faking high sticking injuries

I recently went to the Flames game against Nashville on Tuesday and it was the near the start of the 3rd period, the Flames were up 3-2 and Matthew Lombardi and Darcy Hordichuck(who played chippy all game, but at least Simon beat him up) were skating towards the puck in the Flames corner when all of a sudden Hordichuk grabs for his face and dives to the ice like he was shot. I had 7th row seats(Christmas present) right in the corner that this happened so I could easily see that Lombardi never even touched him with his sticks, he had his stick up a little but deffinently never touched him and even the replay which only had bad angles it never looked like he hit him, but good old Mick McGeough fell for it and Lombardi with an extremely surprised look on his face went to the penalty box and Hordichuk even started the powerplay. The more weird thing was once again tonight I was watching the highlights(not very closely) and in what I think was the Montreal game a similar thing happened but they even had strong video evidence that the player had dived. So I think the NHL needs to start watching for this during the game and checking replays after the game and start fining players like they did with tripping or hooking dives.