ON Sunday, Wildcats and Corey McEwen were on the end of a high-sticking penalty, which I believe needs to be looked at.

The basics of the rule are that any minor penalty that causes an injury that means a player leaves the ice, or blood in this case, is upgraded to a five-plus-match.

Because the player came back and continued in the game, it was downgraded to a five-plus-game, which means he only misses the remainder of that game.

My feeling is that it is a lot of punishment for something that is not usually that bad. In this scenario, it was an accidental high stick and it leads to a player missing the whole game, and potentially the next, and you have to kill five minutes a man light.

We were 3-1 down and we had to kill off five minutes and then try and get back up and it just killed us off.

As a rule, I don’t think it is good. You look at a boarding penalty for a player making a bad hit on Harvey Stead, which potentially is a more dangerous play because you are not looking at missing a couple of teeth or having stitches - you are looking at potential neck injuries or concussion. The penalty for that is two minutes.

It is nothing to do with the referees. They get told what the rule is and they have to adhere to that.

Maybe the way forward should be to allow the referee to use a bit of common sense.

On Sunday, we were joking that there was nothing on the ice and his nose was a bit red. In that case, the referee could see the severity was not great.

The rule is to make people control their sticks so you make the punishment severe, but I don’t think it is something that is as dangerous as other things like boarding, which is a two-plus-10, or charging, which is a two-plus-10.

Any potential dangerous hit - which could be life-changing - is dealt with as severely and there is too much disparity for my liking.

It is something that could really shift momentum in the game and it takes a lot out of the team for the rest of the game, even if you do kill the powerplay.