It’s rare for NHL players to break the wall of emotion they put up when it comes to any interview with the media. The classic hockey cliches are the response to many questions reporters ask. But after the Calgary Flames fell to the Winnipeg Jets in a 4-2 game, Nazem Kadri broke that wall and expressed his displeasure with the officiating.

Kadri scored the Flames’ third goal to tie the game for the third time. It was the second time the Flames had come back from down a goal, signalling an exciting end to what was a back-and-forth game.

With just over five minutes remaining in the third period, there was a scrum behind the Jets net. Two Winnipeg players were pinning Yegor Sharangovich to the boards, attempting to come up with the puck and bring it up the ice.

The two players—Adam Lowry and Neal Pionk—were able to retrieve the puck from Sharangovich’s feet, and Winnipeg defender Pionk started moving the puck up the ice. It was then that Kadri came into the picture to try to take it away, and in the process, he gave a rather large hack to Pionk’s gloves and stick.

The refs decided to penalize Kadri for the action. And what made it worse was that the Flames had just come off a significant 5-on-3 penalty kill following a Martin Pospisil neutral zone penalty and a Rasmus Andersson penalty.

“What are you going to do?” Kadri said following the game, via Flames TV. “We had a great game on our hands. Very unfortunate, that’s what it had to come down to. I feel like you’ve got to have some feel for the game. Especially when they’re coming off a 5-on-3, to have that one called is upsetting… I think both teams were playing great. It was tremendous hockey out there. It was just a toe-to-toe battle. And someone had a little too much decision on the game.”

The Jets would go on to score on that power play thanks to a Cole Perfetti wrist shot from the bottom of the right faceoff dot.

The Jets sealed the deal with an empty-netter with a minute and 15 seconds on the clock.

While the penalty to Kadri looked like the right call on paper, it’s easy to see why he was frustrated that the referees chose to call it a penalty in a physical, fast-paced game to that point. He was trying to win the puck back and made a hard play around the hands of the puck carrier to try and generate a turnover off the forecheck.

However, that being said, there are probably better times to make that play than in the late stages of a tie game right in front of the referee. There are also better ways to “conceal” something like that instead of the two-hand hack that even the broadcast microphones picked up because it was so hard.

The Flames needed to stay off the penalty kill, having already given up a shorthanded goal earlier in the game to Kyle Connor, but because of a lapse in judgment, they didn’t and paid the ultimate price: zero points in the standings. It’s always frustrating when a game like that is decided by a late call that puts one team on the man advantage.

Still, the decision was made to hack at the hand area rather hard right in front of the referee, so it’s hard to fault him for making the call despite the other circumstances. Kadri has every right to be frustrated that it happened on the one hand, but on the other, it’s hard to fault the official for calling what looked like a pretty apparent minor penalty.