Buffalo Sabres defenseman Owen Power was convicted for a crime he didn’t commit – despite evidence that proved his innocence, but wasn’t available to the refs under the current NHL rulebook. 

With 4:28 left in the second period of the Flyers’ 3-1 win over the Sabres at KeyBank Center, Owen Power was whistled for high-sticking Matvei Michkov. One problem: Power’s stick never touched him. It was Philadelphia’s own Trevor Zegras whose stick caught his teammate. The penalized player on the ice was the one guy who hadn’t done anything.

The timing made it worse. Jason Zucker had taken a slashing minor at 14:45, so Buffalo was already shorthanded when the phantom call landed at 15:32, putting the Sabres down two men – already down two goals. Power watched the replay on the video board from the penalty box and erupted. The crowd saw it too, and the “ref you suck” chants rained down.

“I didn’t feel anything,” Power said of the stick call. “I wasn’t sure but I didn’t think so, and then you see the video and it’s pretty obvious.”

The crew – referees Corey Syvret and Garrett Rank, with linespersons David Brisebois and Ryan Jackson – huddled up to discuss the play without the benefit of replay. 

Under the current NHL rulebook, only double-minor or major penalties can be reviewed. Power’s call was just a minor.  If it had resulted in an injury, it would’ve been four-minutes and would’ve allowed the officials to take a second look. No blood, no review. 

One of the referees reportedly skated over to the Sabres bench later in the game to apologize to head coach Lindy Ruff, taking responsibility for the errant penalty.

“The official came over and admitted he made a mistake,” Ruff said. “I said, ‘If you’re going to make that call, you’ve got to be right.’ It was a tough call for us at that time of the game.”

Give him credit – that’s the most accountability you’re going to get from an official in the middle of a game. But accountability doesn’t kill a 5-on-3. Buffalo’s penalty killers did, though, blocking three shots from Louis Crevier and another from Beck Malenstyn across 1:13 of two-man disadvantage to keep it a two-goal game. Zucker then scored shortly after the kill to cut it to 2-1 before Cole Knuble banked one off Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen’s skate three minutes into the third to restore the cushion.

The High-Stick Review Rule

Since 2019-20, the NHL has allowed a double-minor for high-sticking to be reviewed to confirm the stick actually made contact. It’s a good rule, and it exists precisely because of plays like this one – teammates getting clipped by friendly fire.  The review is limited to double-minors and majors.  A two-minute minor? Not reviewable. Not challengeable. 

So the admission, honest as it was, changed nothing. Power served his two minutes for Trevor Zegras’s stick.

Review ‘Em All?

Power was asked if the NHL should consider reviewing all high sticking penalties. 

“I think that’s up to the league to decide.  You also don’t want the game being stopped all the time with reviews,” Power replied. “Being a ref is a tough job, there’s 10 players out there and two of them, so it’s hard to pick up on everything.”

He’s right.  It’d be a lot of reviews.

Last season, officials called 834 high-sticking penalties, 722 of them two-minute minors and 112 double minors. Does the league really want to add that many more reviews – and stoppages – to the game?  What about the rest of the 8,490 minor penalties assessed across the 2025-26 regular season?  What about the high sticks that were missed real-time; do you allow those to be challenged?

That opens its own can of worms – every minor becomes a potential stoppage, and the league has been careful to keep reviews fenced in. But Wednesday night is the strongest argument yet that the fence is in the wrong place: the one call everyone in the arena, including the man who made it, knew was wrong was the one call nobody was allowed to fix. 

Isn’t the whole point of review simply to get it right?