Ottawa needs to win tonight against Montreal or its playoff run will end after just four games, but the Senators ran into penalty troubles in the first half of the contest. The penalties were 3-1 against Ottawa at that stage of the game and that included a very rare call.
The Senators got were charged with consecutive false starts on the draw at 8:34 of the second period. As of the 2014-15 campaign, that’s a minor penalty, but it’s one that’s almost never been applicable in practice.
You can see the unusual scenario below:
Given that this call is scarce enough that you might not have even been aware of its existence, here is Rule 76.6:
When a least two face-off violations have been committed by the same team during the same face-off, this team shall be penalized with a bench minor penalty to the offending team. This penalty shall be announced as a “Bench Minor Penalty for Delay of Game – Face-off Violation.”
Fortunately for the Senators, they killed the penalty to keep the contest scoreless. Wouldn’t that have been an embarrassing way to get eliminated.