Slovakian Hockey Player Butt Checks Opponent

Yesterday, Slovakia and Russia faced off in a preliminary hockey game at the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Jan Laco played the goalie position. When the puck slipped behind him, a Russian player dashed for it.

Then Oh. My. God. Becky. Laco just pushed backwards and crashed into the Russian player like his butt was a block of steel.

Russia prevailed anyway. But now Laco is famous the world over for his butt Czech check.

-via Puck Daily

Ow! Man, that's gotta hurt!

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It's a hip check

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Now 'IANAL of hockey' but from my recollections of hockey rules a player is allowed to check the player who has control of the puck, and the last player to have control (you can check a player after he passes the puck). You are not allowed to check a player simply going for position or a free puck. That's blocking, which in most cases (considering "Katy bar the door" "most" is a stretch) gets a penalty call. So I'm seeing interference, which is what the infraction is called in hockey.

There's actually a penalty in hockey called "butt ending," but that's hitting an opponent with the "butt" end of the hockey stick.

As noted, it might be called a hip check, with all due credit to Miley Cyrus, but it still looks like interference to me.

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