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Mike Babcock admits actual human flaw in Leafs' penalty box goof

Toronto Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock is, as you know, the smartest coach in the NHL, or at least that’s what he’d tell you.

He’s a master tactician. He has a post-grad degree in sports psychology from McGill University. He invented Post-Its, or at least the glue they use on Post-Its. (Still fact-checking that last one.)

But even the biggest brains can goof up sometimes, and Babcock had a mea culpa after the Leafs’ big 5-2 win over the Columbus Blue Jackets on Wednesday:

He made a mistake. An actual mistake, made by humans.

One minute into the third period, defenseman Roman Polak took a bad penalty, boarding Oliver Bjorkstand. He earned a five-minute major and a game misconduct.

But the Leafs opted not to put one of their players in the penalty box to serve the penalty. For some reason.

As a result, Toronto played an extra minute and 45 seconds shorthanded after the five-minute major was over. Luckily for them, the Blue Jackets were unable to convert on their super-sized power play.

The media took notice:

Now, this is a rule some fans might not too familiar with, but Down Goes Brown – connoisseur of the glorious and obscure in hockey – actually covered it in an old Grantland column:

While teams do indeed have to put a player in the box, they don’t actually have to do it right away. Rule 20.3 makes it clear that a team “does not have to place a substitute player on the penalty bench immediately”; it’s completely legal to keep the entire bench intact by just leaving the box empty when the penalty starts, and leave it that way as long as desired. During any stoppage in play before the penalty ends, the team can send somebody over to serve whatever’s left of the penalty.

Of course, there’s a slight flaw in that sort of plan, and it’s the reason teams almost never try this particular move: If there isn’t a stoppage, and the power play ends before you can get somebody into the box, you’re pretty much screwed. With nobody to come out of the box, the power play would continue indefinitely, or at least until the next whistle. You can’t get to even strength by having a guy hop over the boards from the bench — he has to come from the penalty box. And to make matters worse, you’re not even technically considered shorthanded anymore, so you can’t ice the puck like you would on a typical penalty kill.

And that’s how it played out.

So after the game, Babcock admitted he goofed.

“We laughed on the bench, but let’s not kid ourselves: It’s all my fault. We got me, two assistants on the bench, two in the video room and you got 15 players sittin’ on the bench and we can’t get that done right? Often it happens, and you just fire a guy in, but it just went the whole time. We didn’t do anything about it,” said Babcock.

“In hindsight, if that had cost you, it’d be terrible. So I can tell you that never in my lifetime will that happen again. I’ll never wait to put a guy in or any of that. ‘You’re going, whether you like it or not!’” he said. “Anyway, our penalty kill was real good.”

And hey, the Leafs as a whole were really good, moving into third place in the Atlantic Division with the win, with 10 games remaining, one more than the second-wild-card Boston Bruins.

Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

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