Erie Otters center Dylan Strome avenged the loss of his stick by scoring with his opponent’s.
When Strome knocked the stick out of the hands of London Knights defenseman Brandon Crawley, the blueliner responded by grabbing Strome’s stick and rejoining the play.
An incredulous Strome, looking for a call, eventually found Crawley’s stick. He picked it up, headed to the slot, and scored to give Erie a 5-1 lead.
“That was one of the weirdest plays, ever,” said Strome, via Mark Schieg of THW. “I was skating in from of the net and [Crawley] had my stick, so I was yelling at the ref. I just thought I should probably grab his stick.”
“It worked out pretty well.”
Crazy situation, right? Also an entirely illegal one.
Both the OHL and the NHL prohibit players from using opponents’ sticks.
Rule 10.3:
A player who has lost or broken his stick may receive a replacement stick by having one handed to him from his own players’ bench; by having one handed to him by a teammate on the ice; or by picking up his own unbroken stick or that of a teammate’s from the ice.
A player will be penalized if he throws, tosses, slides or shoots a stick to a teammate on the ice, or if he picks up and plays with an opponent’s stick.
Desperate moments call for desperate measures. Those include grabbing a stick right out of your opponent’s hands, or picking up the nearest tray stick and rejoining the play.
In this case, both players got away with it. Perhaps London would’ve preferred the matching penalties instead of giving up a goal.
