It was a high stick, and the one guy in the building who didn't need a replay to confirm it was the one who swung the stick.
Marchenko caught Tim Stützle up high, the penalty got called, and after Ottawa beat Toronto on October 3 he didn't reach for a single excuse. He said "It's on me." No stanchion complaint, no nodding along to the idea that Stützle only went down because Stützle always goes down. The man responsible for the contact accepted he was responsible for the contact. That should be the end of it.
It isn't, because his teammates decided to argue the case he conceded. "Actually, I don't see anything" was the Leafs' line on the call that tilted the game Ottawa's way. That's a strange hill to die on when your own teammate is standing a few lockers down taking the blame in plain language.
The best defense sounds like this: you can't prove the blade touched his face, since it could just as easily have been the shaft grazing the visor. Fine. Except Marchenko watched it from closer than any camera, and he didn't ask for that benefit of the doubt. The player who committed the infraction and the officials who called it already agree. The people still insisting it didn't happen are the ones who need to prove it.
Stützle has earned his reputation. He's been called out for embellishment more than once, and opponents love reminding him of it. None of that shields the other guy. A player who sometimes dives can still get a stick in the face. History doesn't turn a real high stick into a dive. Treating the two as the same thing is just a way to avoid admitting your team took a dumb penalty at a bad time.
That's the part the "he sold it" crowd keeps skating around. Toronto lost this one on penalty trouble and a power play that couldn't make Ottawa pay. Stephen Halliday scored the winner, Linus Ullmark was a wall, and the Leafs handed the Senators the exact kind of chances that decide tight games early in a season. The stick on Stützle was a mistake, one Marchenko named before anyone could spin it.
Keep running the frame-by-frame if you want. Keep arguing about the replay angle. The guy who did it already said the only thing that matters: "It's on me." Listen to him.
