McDavid Throws Olympic Officials a Bone After Botched Call

Connor McDavid, like many playing and watching the quarter final game between Team Canada and Czechia on Wednesday, was disappointed that Team Czechia wasn’t given a too many men penalty. It was a clear miss, despite their head coach’s attempt to argue that the officials were leaning too far in favor of the Canadians.

Fresh off leading Team Canada with a tournament-high 11 points (tying an NHL player record for most in a single Olympics), he would have understandably been disappointed if that was the way Team Canada went out. The controversy over it would have been the front-page storyline out of these Olympics.

The play in question came at 12:18 of the third, when Ondrej Palat scored to put Czechia up 3-2. Replays and still shots (widely shared on social media, including by The Athletic’s Thomas Drance) clearly showed Czechia with six skaters on the ice during the sequence—sometimes even appearing to have eight involved in the line change. It was so obvious that Czechia had six skaters in the celebratory hug after the goal, yet no one seemed to notice.

An infraction that was not reviewable went uncalled by the officials, and, remarkably, neither the Canadian bench nor the players noticed in real time.

“I’m upset we didn’t see it either, but everybody’s on the bench watching the game, and none of us saw it, so the refs didn’t see it, nobody saw it, it seemed like. Glad that it didn’t cost us our tournament, with that being said, we definitely gotta be more aware of what’s going on out there.”

He said in other interviews, “I’m not sure how we missed it. Nobody even mentioned it until after the game. So, we’ve got to do a better job paying attention. That being said, the refs do too. Everybody can. I feel like everybody missed it.”