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Huge hit from Borowiecki leads to a very questionable call from the NHL officials.

Huge hit from Borowiecki leads to a very questionable call from the NHL officials.

NHL officials once again leaves fan frustrated.

HockeyFeed

HockeyFeed

The National Hockey League officials have once again drawn the ire of NHL fans. 

On Sunday night the Ottawa Senators were taking on the Las Vegas Golden Knights and the Senators jumped out to an early 1 - 0 lead in the first period. The Senators had a chance to extend that lead with just a little under 5 minutes left to go in the first period but a huge hit from Senators defenseman Mark Borowiecki led to a controversial call from the National Hockey League officials on the ice. 

After the Senators turned the puck over in the Golden Knights zone, veteran Golden Knights center Cody Eakin corralled the puck and attempted to make a play up the ice, only to be leveled by the huge hit from Borowiecki. The hit took Eakin completely out of the play and left the Senators with what effectively amounted to a man advantage, something they took full advantage of. The Senators regained control of the puck and seemingly had set themselves up for a high danger scoring chance in the high slot, only to have the NHL officials on the ice blow the play dead while they had full control of the puck.

Golden Knights defenseman Jon Merrill immediately went to challenge Borowiecki for his hit on Eakin but unfortunately for Merrill that seemed to be a rather poor decision on his part. Borowiecki completely dominated the fight landing the only significant punches of the exchnage and it was quite clear that Merrill had bitten off more than he can chew. Making matters worse for the Senators however was in spite of the fact that Merrill was given an instigator penalty on the sequence, the Senators came out the loser due to the fact that Borowiecki  was assesed an additional major for his hit on Eakin.

This is where the issue comes in for the fans, while the hit from Borowiecki did appear to make contact with Eakins head it did not appear to be the primary point of contact. Additionally the fact that Eakin's head was hit at all could easily be attributed to the fact that Eakin had his head way down prior to getting hit, and in spite of that Borowiecki  appeared to manage to make his body the primary focus of his hit. 

The Senators were stripped of a scoring chance, stripped of what should have been a power play based on the instigator penalty, and had one of their players ejected on what was a highly questionable call to begin with. 

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