VIDEO: Steven Stamkos throws broken stick into crowd, gets tossed
Steven Stamkos ended up getting a 10-minute misconduct when he threw a broken half of his hockey stick into the crowd in Boston (accidentally).
By
Chris Peters
•
1 min read
Steven Stamkos was frustrated. His Tampa Bay Lightning were getting skunked on an overtime power play against the Boston Bruins and at the worst possible time, his stick snapped in half on a shot attempt.
One end of Stamkos' twig flew into the Tampa Bay bench. He still had the top of the stick in his hand however. He went to toss it away, but in his frustration, he held on just a tad too long. The top half of his stick went flying into the TD Garden crowd. Play was immediately stopped and Stamkos was shown the gate for a 10-minute misconduct for throwing his stick out of the playing surface.
There was only a minute remaining in the extra period, and lucky for Stamkos that call didn't come with an additional minor that would have left the Bolts short for the remainder of the extra period. Stamkos wasn't available for the shootout, however.
It was an honest mistake from Stamkos, who obviously wasn't trying to throw his stick in the stands, but intent doesn’t matter on that play.
At least this young fella got himself a unique souvenir.
There is some question as to whether or not Stamkos will face any additional discipline for the stick incident, even though it appeared to be an accident. The same thing happened to Jonathan Toews last season and he was not disciplined further. However, back in 2003-04, Mats Sundin received a one-game ban on a similar incident.
Odds are nothing will happen to Stamkos, but it sounds like it is going to get looked into at least:
Player Safety will look at Stamkos broken stick toss, but discipline unlikely. Similar to Toews last year. Careless, but not intentional.
— Darren Dreger (@DarrenDreger) March 13, 2015
Oh, and by the way, the Bruins won in the shootout to earn the hugely valuable two points.
