World junior championship: Czech Republic’s Michal Plutnar knocks over linesman; why was that only 2 minutes?

For once, Canada rallied to the cause of an international hockey official.

At the end of the second period at the world junior championship, Czech Republic defenceman Michal Plutnar took offence when Team Canada's Connor McDavid shot the puck into the net after the second-period buzzer. Plutnar, who plays for the Western Hockey League's Tri-City Americans, stuck up for his goaltender and tried to get at McDavid, only to take out the linesman with a shove.

The International Ice Hockey Federation has a supplementary discipline panel that could yet rule that the 19-year-old Plutnar got off lightly with just a two-minute roughing penalty. It seems doubtful that it would, based on the clarification for the minor penalty that the IIHF furnished to TSN reporter Nabil Karim. Apparently, the two referees accepted that Plutnar did not deliberately make contact with the linesman, so they opted against assessing a more severe penalty.

That ran counter to TSN analyst Ray Ferraro's incredulous reaction.

Should a player get some benefit of the doubt because it wasn't deemed deliberate? It's been known to happen in other instances where a junior player made contact with a linesman during a heated moment. Hockey is fueled by emotion. Not completely neutering it is the priority.

Canada got a power play out of Plutnar's overreaction, which it converted, although it lost 5-4 in a shootout to fall to 1-0-1-0 in the tournament.

(Stick taps: Chris Peters, Josh Gold-Smith.)

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet. Please address any questions, comments or concerns to btnblog@yahoo.ca.