An unusual penalty was assessed against the Predators early in the first period of their Nov. 20 game in Seattle against the Kraken. Shortly after the opening faceoff, the on-ice officials were huddled near the penalty boxes in discussions with the off-ice officials.

Shortly thereafter, referee T.J. Luxmore announced the Predators would be shorthanded due to a bench minor penalty for starting the wrong lineup.

Before a game’s start, the visiting team needs to declare their starting lineup, then the home team can formulate their starting lineup after that. Predators head coach Andrew Brunette started the team’s top forward line of Filip Forsberg, Ryan O’Reilly and Gustav Nyquist, along with defensemen Jeremy Lauzon and Alex Carrier.

The only problem for the Predators was that Steven Stamkos’ name was on the lineup card as a starter, not Forsberg. Stamkos wears jersey No. 91 and Forsberg No. 9. The eagle-eyed Kraken bench spotted the error and brought it to the attention of the on-ice officials, as per protocol with NHL Rule 7.2.

“?Violation – For an infraction of this rule, a bench minor penalty shall be imposed upon the offending team. This is an appeal play and must be brought to the Referee’s attention before the second face-off in the game. There is no penalty to the requesting team if their appeal is unsustained. The determining factor is the player or goalkeeper’s name, and not necessarily the player or goalkeeper’s number, must be correctly listed by the team.”

While the Kraken bench may be eagle-eyed, the Washington state bird is the American goldfinch, whose vision isn’t often utilized in the realm of Audubon-related metaphors.

The Predators were playing the fifth of their two-week long five-game road trip, so there was likely a fatigue factor involved with the mistake but checks and balances should be in place to prevent this error from happening.

Seattle failed to score on the ensuing power play, so that lessened the potential negative impact from an early deficit on the scoreboard to just a minor embarrassment.

The game was part of a national broadcast on TNT and Brunette did a media timeout interview with game analyst Darren Pang. Pang inquired about the error and Brunette did not give much information at first. Pang followed up and referenced the fact that the team did kill off the penalty, Brunette replied, “Great penalty kill … maybe that’s what we needed.”

In the spirit of the approaching holidays, Brunette will likely make a list and check it twice, or probably even more, going forward when submitting his lineup and cross checking it with who is on the ice for the opening faceoff.