Breaking Down Everything That Was Illegal About That KHL Javelin Goal
By now I’m sure that all of you have seen Vladimir Tkachyov’s javelin goal from the KHL yesterday. Viral did a helluva job with the write up and continues to be one of the better talents on the internet. It was a fun goal that highlights how entertaining and creative hockey can be. Hell, it even got SportsCenter to show a hockey highlight in the month of August. But as a journalist with a heightened level of responsibility to uphold a standard of integrity, I can’t let this goal slide without at least bringing up how wildly illegal it was. For starters, throwing your stick is frowned upon at the very minimum.
As you can see in Figure 1 here, Tkachyov’s stick starts in his possession at the beginning of the shootout attempt…
Figure 2 then shows that Tkachyov’s stick is no longer in his possession by the end of the shootout attempt, but rather flung into the general direction of the net.
Hmmmmmm. That doesn’t seem very legal to me. But what would I know? I’m just some idiot smut blogger. And even IF throwing your stick were legal, take a look at where Tkachyov’s stick is at. Now take a look at Figure 3 demonstrating where the crossbar is located.
Hmmmmm….. it would appear that at the very least, this shootout attempt should have been disallowed on account of high sticking. But it goes even further than the actual play itself. I know that when some of you watched this shootout move, you were left wondering to yourself “how?”. Well I’ll tell you how. Vladimir Tkachyov is Russian. And for Russian athletes, meldonium is essentially as necessary to their daily life as water and air. There’s no doubt in my mind that Tkachyov is doping. I’d hop on the next flight to Russia and force him to piss in a cup if Portnoy needed me to get to the bottom of this (or if he knew I even exist). Throwing the stick, high sticking, and doping. 3 strikes and you’re out. Not even to mention that this goal looked like a lot of fun and from everything I’ve gathered about Russia, it’s illegal to have fun there. So yeah, one shootout move and it’s illegal on four different counts. But let’s keep talking about it like it’s the greatest goal since Eruzione put those Soviet bastards away in 1980….
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maybe the Russians should stop hacking into our email servers and start hacking into their own rulebooks. Just a thought.