Screw up forces the Ducks to play the whole game with 1 less player than the Oilers!

At the end of the day we are all human beings and not a single one of us is anything remotely resembling perfect, but this kind of mistake at the National Hockey League level still feels rather egregious.

The Anaheim Ducks made a rather big blunder on Saturday night ahead of what was a relatively meaningless game against the Edmonton Oilers, a game that realistically had absolutely no playoff implications for either team. In fact so big a blunder that the Ducks were forced to play the entire game with a shorter bench due to what appears to have been an error in the information they transmitted to the National Hockey League.

You see the Ducks attempted to field 25 year old Jake Dotchin on Saturday night but the young defenseman actually was not listed as part of Anaheim's line up. In fact according to the on ice officials as well as the members of the broadcast team covering the game, it appears that the Ducks instead had listed Dotchin as a healthy scratch for the evening. It is still unclear at this time who made the mistake and who should bear responsibility for said mistake, but the end result is of course the same. Not only were the Ducks forced to send Dotchin back to the dressing room, no doubt a rather frustrating experience for the young blue liner, but they are now also forced to play the game down one of their defensemen for the entire length of the game.

What is particularly interesting about all of this is that it took roughly about 2 and a half minutes before anyone involved in the game even realized that something was not quite right, and in fact if I had to wager a guess I would suggest that it probably wasn't even one of the officials on the ice who spotted the mistake. More likely it was probably either a rather astute member of the Edmonton Oilers staff that noticed the mistake, that is where my money would be, or perhaps the NHL's head office has someone assigned to making sure the right players are in the game each and every night.

[pub]