1000 IQ Play: Slashing Yourself In The Teeth With Your Opponent's Stick To Draw A 4-Minute Penalty
Lucas Raymond is just 21 years old. He's playing in just his 3rd NHL season so far, but by god if that isn't one of the most savvy veteran moves I ever did see.
Hockey is such a fast game, especially at the NHL level. You have milliseconds to make a decision out there sometimes. It's why the game is too fast for 99% of the hockey playing population to ever crack an NHL lineup. Most of these guys either have a freakish ability to slow the game down in their head, or they just play purely based off instinct. Lucas Raymond's instincts told him to grab the stick of his opponent, slash himself in the mouth so hard that he cuts himself open and bleeds a little, all in hopes of drawing a 4-minute powerplay. That's a hockey guy.
Unfortunately for Lucas Raymond, these things called cameras exist. And they use those cameras to review certain situations in the game, like if a player slashed himself in the mouth with another player's stick instead of it just being an actual high-sticking penalty. Seems like a wild invasion of privacy to me, but what would I know. If it weren't for those pesky little cameras that catch everything on the ice at 4k? He would have gotten away with it, the Red Wings probably would have scored on the powerplay, and they wouldn't have lost that game to New York.
Anyway, you gotta love to see the creativity out there. The game is in great hands, even if the sticks are in the wrong ones.