But I think you need to be clear on just what you are sure about. I think there’s no question that he intended contact with his leg. That’s not an accident, and maybe that’s enough to convict because of the concomitant risk of harm from the skate, I don’t know the law. But from that video I don’t see how anyone could say beyond a reasonable doubt that he specifically intended to kick him with his skate.
Well presumably, being a seasoned skater, he knew there was a skate attached to the end of the leg he was intentionally throwing.
But there’s still a very significant difference between intending to hit him with your leg with some foreseeable risk of slashing him with your skate and actually intending to slash him with your skate.
Supposedly under consideration for the NHL.
Apparently the league and players can be influenced to adopt a neck guard by a rare grievous injury, but won’t adopt a helmet with a proper mouth protector to prevent horrible oral and dental injuries, which are less likely to be fatal. 
I’ve never once said or insinuated that I thought he intentionally slashed him only that he should have been aware while throwing a kick with a sharpened steel blade attached to his foot, that there was potential for injury.
I’m not trying to have a pissing match about what you did or didn’t say, I’m just trying to clarify what we think we can say with certainty from that video, because exactly what was intended vs what was reckless is important from a legal perspecitve.
Not even trying to play devil’s advocate here, but I just watched the footage frame by frame; all of the players are moving left to right with the camera following them; the player in red collides with another player and (it’s impossible to be sure from that video), it’s not impossible that his right skate hit the boot of the player he collided with and this skate twisted and dug into the ice, stopping that leg abruptly and causing his body to continue toppling over his right leg, causing his left leg to cartwheel up, into the path of the unfortunate other player who was moving toward him.
It doesn’t look like it when you watch the video at full speed, because the panning of the camera interferes with the perception of general vs relative motion of the players, but if you watch it frame by frame, I dunno. I’ve never played ice hockey, but I have done a LOT of ice skating in my younger days, and I’ve seen and experienced incidents where one skate digs in when the skater is moving at speed, the top-heavy body cartwheels over the leg that is stopped and the free leg ends up high-kicking, or making a full heels-over head type of flip.
Or he might have done it on purpose. I think it’s worth watching frame by frame (to do this, pause the youtube video and use the < and > keys to step by frame). If from watching the full speed video, you are under the impression that the guy in red lunged toward the other player, that’s demonstrably not what happened; the player in red abruptly stopped, his leg went up; the other guy who was also moving at speed, moved into the path of the raised skate. Doesn’t absolutely mean it was accidental; that could still happen on purpose out of malice, etc
No pissing match, I just wanted to reiterate that I never said and don’t believe he intentionally killed him.
I’m not a lawyers (and certainly no English lawyer) and of course we can’t know what was in his mind, but I’ve been to, and watched on TV, lots of hockey games and this is the first high kick I can remember being thrown. And hockey by nature is a rough sport. If not manslaughter this certainly rises to depraved indifference, imho.
I dunno. A better way to view it is set your YouTube playback to speed to .25. I have played hockey and to me it seems like he didn’t just collide, he was intentionally blocking. I don’t see an edge catch.
All I’m saying is that on watching the video at normal speed, I was convinced the player in red made a deliberate swerve and lunge to the left; on watching it frame by frame, ignoring what the camera is doing, and looking solely at the movement of players relative to the ice, it paints a rather different picture.
I can’t tell if the skate dug in; the resolution is too poor, but the right boots of the first two players do look like they struck each other; there is a single-frame bright flash, indicating that we are seeing the reflection off the blade of the right boot (which means it is at a weird angle), and there does appear to be a spray of ice from that right boot in subsequent frames. Furthermore, the red player does not move to the left; he stops and cartwheels; the player who was injured and killed is not struck by the raised left skate; he strikes it.
Not sure you get that just by slowing down playback; stopping it completely and shuttling frames back and forth allows you to really take in the relative position and motion of skaters on the ice, and ignore the illusions caused by the panning camera.
Like I say, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t deliberate. I imagine hockey players potentially have a lot more control over what’s happening to their bodies and equipment, even when they are falling over.
At the least, a 5 minute major is warranted.
So to pour some gasoline on this fire, here’s some old OHL footage of Petgrave going for a hit, upending his man, and kicking out his leg at the end for good measure.
Is that just a coincidence, or is it a pattern?
Yes, I agree it was a tragic accident. The opposing player made the first hit from the side and, to keep his balance, raised his other leg much like a figure skater. The sweeping motion of his leg literally cut the man’s throat. It was horrific and happened so fast.
Watching the incident, it doesn’t look to me like the high kick was actually intentional, even though I can see how one could think it was. To me it looks like a freak accident after a typical high-speed contact, that ended up resembling a Mortal Kombat type of move.
Just looked like a typically violent hockey hit to me, and it in no way resembled the tragic incident pictured in the OP. In fact, it looks like they didn’t even call a penalty on the hit because play continued well past the hit with both teams touching the puck.
Kicks in hockey are in, no way, typical. Did you see DCnDC’s link? It seems like a pattern to me.
I think the kick looked like a backwards / sideways slipping on a banana peel type of deal. Uncontrolled and unintended.
To me it looks more intentional than not, but there’s enough of a benefit of a doubt that I couldn’t conclusively state one way or another. I’ve looked at it frame-by-frame, at full speed, at 1/4 speed, and I don’t think it’s either obviously intentional or obviously unintentional, but somewhere in between, but to me looking more likely at least somewhat intentional than not.
I just played it back at 25% speed and there’s no doubt to me that he intentionally meant to kick the other player. Maybe not that high? But normal hockey players just don’t kick each other, because a skate to the thigh or the stomach will also leave quite a mark.