Zegras Gets 10-Minute Misconduct After Puck Off Referee Sets Up Wild Goal

Trevor Zegras spent 10 minutes in the penalty box on Tuesday night because he argued with a referee about a goal the rulebook says had to count. Jamie Drysdale’s clearing attempt struck referee Kyle Rehman and stayed in the Flyers’ zone, Matt Boldy shot, and Joel Eriksson Ek buried the rebound for a 3-0 Minnesota lead. Zegras tapped his stick at Rehman, drew a 10-minute misconduct, and afterwards called it a stupid decision by him. Philadelphia lost 4-2, and the misconduct, not the deflection, is the part of the night Zegras will have to answer for.

How did a puck off a referee become a goal?

It became a goal because officials are part of the playing area, and the play developed legally after the deflection. Scouting the Refs reports that early in the second period, with Minnesota already up 2-0, Drysdale tried to play the puck up the boards out of the Flyers’ zone, and instead it struck Rehman and stayed in. The Wild kept the pressure on, Boldy got a shot on goal, and Eriksson Ek buried the rebound to make it 3-0. Crossing Broad tells the same sequence with a detail that makes the bad luck sharper: Drysdale had the entire right side of the ice, flipped the puck right into the referee’s feet, and Rehman tried to jump and it hit him anyway. The goal was not a deflection straight into the net, which is the one case the rulebook would have disallowed. It was a deflection, then a shot, then a rebound, and each step after the first was a legal hockey play. The signals officials use, and what each one means on the ice, are the background to why no whistle came.

Why could Zegras not argue the goal away?

Because there was no argument available in the rulebook, and no review that could have changed it. Scouting the Refs explains that a puck striking an official is a live puck, with no basis for a whistle, stoppage or do-over, and no relief for a team burned by the bounce. The exception lives in Rule 78.5, which disallows a goal when the puck has been deflected directly into the net off an official. That was not this play: the puck deflected off Rehman to Boldy, whose shot was stopped, and the rebound went in off Eriksson Ek’s stick. Scouting the Refs adds that the play is not eligible for video review or a coach’s challenge either, so even a calmer protest would have gone nowhere. That is the part of the night that stings most for Flyers fans, and it is also the part that makes Zegras’s reaction harder to defend: he was arguing about a ruling that was correct, in a game his team was already losing 2-0, after a first period in which Minnesota had already scored twice in quick succession.

What did Zegras actually do, and what did it cost?

He tapped his stick at the referee, and the referee answered with the misconduct tier of the abuse-of-officials rule. Scouting the Refs reports that as Minnesota celebrated, Zegras challenged Rehman, slapping his stick on the ice, and Rehman issued a 10-minute misconduct. Crossing Broad describes the same moment as sarcastic stick taps, and Broad Street Hockey reports Zegras let Rehman hear it after the goal horn sounded. The rule, as Scouting the Refs lays it out, is Rule 39: a player shall not challenge or dispute the rulings of an official, and Rule 39.4 is the 10-minute misconduct tier, as opposed to the minor-penalty tier in Rule 39.2. There was no minor first and, per the broadcast, no prior warning, which Scouting the Refs notes is within the referee’s discretion when the outburst is judged over the line on its own. The cost, in team terms, was smaller than it looked: a 10-minute misconduct punishes only the player, so Philadelphia did not play shorthanded. Zegras served it, came back, and finished with 20:01 of ice time and a secondary assist on Denver Barkey’s first career NHL goal, a third-period power-play marker. The cost in personal terms was a night defined by 10 minutes in the box in a game his team lost by two.

What did Zegras and Tocchet say afterwards?

They said the same thing, in different tones, and that agreement is what closes the argument. Scouting the Refs quotes Zegras: “Just frustrated. I can’t be doing that. I’ve known Kyle [Rehman] for a long time. Just a stupid decision by me.” Broad Street Hockey adds his wider point, that the Flyers keep saying they want to take positives away but need to start finishing chances and giving themselves a better chance earlier in games. Tocchet, quoted by Scouting the Refs and Crossing Broad, said: “I don’t want to see it. You are showing the ref up. Whether or not you are pissed, you can’t tap the ice. You shouldn’t do that.” Broad Street Hockey notes Tocchet did not go out of his way to call out his player, but also did not defend him, and still played him for nearly half of the third period. There is no split here to exploit, no coach-player row to build a second article around. The player owned it, the coach named it, and both moved on to the same road trip. A Flyers debut earlier this season showed a different kind of first impression, when Cole Knuble made his NHL debut against Colorado with his parents in the building.

Why is there no further punishment?

Because a lone 10-minute misconduct, on its own, carries none. Scouting the Refs is explicit: no fine, no suspension, no carryover, and no Player Safety angle to a verbal or gesture misconduct. This was Zegras’s first misconduct of 2026-27, taking him from 14 penalty minutes through 16 games to 24, and the matter ends with the time he already served. That is a useful correction to the way the clip travels online, where a player disappearing to the box for half a period can look like a major incident. It was half a period in the box, and it was also a personal penalty that left Philadelphia at full strength, in a game where the larger problems were the 2-0 start and the missed chances Tocchet counted afterwards. Crossing Broad quotes Tocchet on those chances: 23 missed shots, and 9 or 10 scoring chances where the Flyers missed the net. The misconduct did not cause those misses. It just gave a frustrating night its most visible moment. A different kind of Flyers penalty night, with two penalties in eight seconds, shows how quickly a box can fill up without changing the result on its own.

What happens next for Philadelphia?

A five-game road trip, starting in the hardest building in the division. Broad Street Hockey reports the trip starts Thursday night at Madison Square Garden against the Rangers, then heads west to Calgary, Vancouver and Edmonton, and wraps up against Columbus. The loss dropped Philadelphia to 4-9-4, Scouting the Refs reports, and Crossing Broad notes the Flyers battled back to 3-2 in the third period before Minnesota found an empty-net goal to close a 4-2 win. Zegras’s own framing of the trip, quoted by Broad Street Hockey, is that a run of good results on the road could bring energy back to the group, and that the goals will start to come if the power play keeps improving and the five-on-five game follows. That is a reasonable hope, and it is also the test of whether Tuesday’s lesson stuck: the next time a puck bounces off an official, the Flyers need the player nearest the referee to skate away, not tap his stick. The goal will still count. The 10 minutes do not have to follow it. The officiating questions that run for days in this sport, as they did when a hit drew no penalty and a player left the ice, usually end the same way: the rulebook is read, the call stands, and the team that argued it has a trip to take.