Another sweet “W” on the board for the Dallas Stars, and this time they were not about to let the Avalanche crash their party! After getting blanked 4-0 in Game 4—where Gabriel Landeskog made a Cinderella comeback and slapped home his first goal in nearly three years—Dallas came back with pure fire in their skates. They shook off that rough shutout loss like it was just dust on their jersey, smashing their way to a 5-2 win in Game 5.
Meanwhile, Dallas is just skating on with that 3-2 series lead, while Avalanche fans are left throwing side-eyes harder than slap shots. But, hold up, it wasn’t the big dub that had fans buzzing all over the place. Nope — the real tea was all about the refs letting Dallas’s aggressive plays slide right under the radar.
B/R Open Ice lit up X with a wild clip that had the whole hockey world clutching their pearls—Dallas Stars’ Roope Hintz straight-up smacked Avalanche’s Nathan MacKinnon right across the neck with his stick. Like, full-on whack — and guess what? The refs just stood there like they were watching a magic trick. No call, no whistle, nothing. They captioned it, “Hintz cross-checked MacKinnon and DIDN’T get a penalty,” and, boy, the fans flew into the comments like bees at a barbecue.
Hintz cross-checked MacKinnon and DIDN’T get a penalty pic.twitter.com/lEOL5Af3SG
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) April 29, 2025
One fan dropped the mic with, “Cross checked him on his brain stem, yet no call! ” Honestly, at this point, it doesn’t matter if you’re team Dallas Stars, team Avs, or team Chaos—everybody’s united in the sacred hockey tradition of roasting the refs when things get sketchy.
And just when you thought the ref drama couldn’t crank any higher, Aaron Ekblad over at Panthers vs Lightning said, ‘Hold my stick.’ As Florida snagged a 4-2 dub to stretch their series lead to 3-1, Ekblad decided to add a little WWE flavor, dropping a mighty elbow to Brandon Hagel’s head in the second period — and again, no penalty. Fans were losing it harder than a puck in a snowstorm. Even ESPN’s P.K. Subban couldn’t help but crack up, posting, “Dude, look where the ref is. The fans are going to want to hang that guy upside down,” calling it exactly what it was — “a headshot.”
This story is developing…
The post Referee Under Fire for Sparing Dallas Stars Aggressive Play Against Avalanche During Game 5 appeared first on EssentiallySports.
