Is Turning The Lights Off And Using An LED Stick In A Shootout Illegal? No. Should It Be? That's Not For Me To Decide
A lot of people often say to me, “wow, Jordie, your job must be awesome. You just get to sit around and watch tv all day, right?”. My answer to them is always that there’s a lot more work that goes into this than you’d imagine. Part of my job is going through the hockey rulebook with a fine-tooth comb trying to find out if this shootout move by Linus Omark is a legal hockey play or not. And after hours and hours of sifting through the rulebook, I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing in there that says that a player cannot turn off the lights in the stadium while attempting a shootout while using an LED stick to light his way to the net.
HOWEVA…
There is still a reason why this shootout attempt should not count and it’s the same reason why that nasty one-handed shootout move from last week wouldn’t count either.
As you can see, Omark clearly stops the puck’s forward motion toward the opponent’s goal line, thus rendering this attempt illegal. I don’t know why it’s so hard for these guys to follow that rule but they really seem to struggle with it. The rest of the move, however, is perfectly fine. I promise you that you can read the rulebook from cover to cover and you won’t find a single thing in there that explicitly states you are not allowed to turn off the lights in the arena during your shootout attempt. And until that rule is placed in the book, it cannot be penalized. All Linus Omark had to do was allow the puck to continue gliding toward the net here and it would have been a good goal. Better luck next time.
Now let’s sit back and enjoy some more from Lord Dangles.