from Stu Hackel of Sports Illustrated,
The idea for the 2013-14 season, according to league sources, is that the NHL's office in Toronto will handle the additional calls. Ideally as the referee on the ice is making his decision about whether a high sticking penalty should be two or four minutes, league staff in the Roger Neilson Video Room (where goal/no goal judgments are made) will be examining the video evidence at its disposal to determine how the fouled player was injured.
It all sounds pretty simple. Of course, it's not.
First of all, there's no absolute guarantee that Toronto will have the video it needs to be certain that it can make a correct call. For goal/no goal decisions, the league has access to exclusive overhead cameras and various other angles that can cover a great deal of the relevant action around the net. A high stick can take place anywhere on the ice, and while there are more TV cameras than ever shooting games, there's still a chance that they won't get the definitive shot.
That leads to the time factor.
Even if the occasional video decision about a goal takes a while to make, we've come to expect answers pretty quickly. When you think through how a double minor high stick call might be reviewed, there will likely be some delays. The ref puts his hand up to signal the infraction, and when the play is whistled down he often goes over to check the victim to see if he's bleeding or has suffered some other injury that would turn a two minute call into a four minute penalty. Hopefully, that's when the process starts in Toronto, but since the review crew there may not immediately have all the appropriate angles in the video room, it may well have to wait until the telecasters show what they have and use it to verify the cause pf the injury.
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