The Comparison of the Golden Knights' 5 Minute Major Meltdown to the Non-Call in the NFC Championship is a Bigger Joke Than Either

The full Jonathan Marchessault rant on the Game 7 major penalty called on Cody Eakin in the 3rd period. He said the @GoldenKnights got jobbed like the New Orleans Saints. #NHL @SanJoseSharks pic.twitter.com/uBsXGFAVzM

— Greg Wyshynski (@wyshynski) April 24, 2019

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Look, I get it. It's an easy (also see: lazy) comparison to make. For the foreseeable future, any time a sports' team feels as though they were jobbed by incompetent officiating in a way that even slightly affected the outcome of an important game they are going to invoke the eternally and unforgettably stained postseason of the 2018 New Orleans Saints. Mix in the fact that this too will probably result in a change to replay rules, and I can certainly see some similarities. 

​However, while I understand that Jonathan Marchessault was speaking purely out of frustration in the wake of his team's season being brought to an untimely end that was nothing short of shocking, what we aren't going to do is ignore the much more numerous differences in the two scenarios. For instance, the Saints may have blown some opportunities to (re-)win a close game that was put up for grabs as soon as they were denied a blatantly deserved opportunity to casually kick their way into the Super Bowl with mere seconds left. What they definitely didn't do is make a mockery of math with an embarrassing attempt to protect a huge lead with half a period remaining...

According to https://t.co/uWkQZH4JWN, the Sharks had a 1.19 percent chance to win the game when they were given the five-minute major. The call didn't decide it. None of you would have bet on the Sharks winning, even after they got that 5 minute major. The piss-poor PK cost them

— Rafay Asrar (@rasrar89) April 24, 2019

Never mind the fact that one crappy call, no matter how impactful, statistically matters less in a seven-game series (that, need I remind you, Vegas led 3-1) than it does a one-game winner-take-all, because the truth of the matter is that the Golden Knights are deflecting a laughable amount of blame by drawing such a false equivalence. I honestly don't even what the NFL equivalent of giving up four goals in four minutes of 5-on-4 would be, but it certainly wouldn't be losing in OT after allowing one of the best offenses in the league to two-minute drill a long, game-tying field goal at the end of regulation. 

Point being, the only reason anyone in the Golden Knights' locker room thinks they've truly felt the pain of the Saints is because feeling a worse pain is unimaginable to them right now. Unimaginable, however, is not synonymous with impossible, as New Orleans had what little doubt they left in the outcome multiplied exponentially by the human error of officiating. Vegas, on the other hand, still had little doubt left in the outcome regardless of the officiating until they, themselves multiplied it's effect exponentially with their own human error.

There are plenty of people that still stand firm that the Saints choked, and if that's even 10% true then it's a miracle that the Golden Knights could even mutter such an asinine analogy without needing the Heimlich maneuver to remove a historically half-assed and haphazard penalty kill, that is understandably tough to swallow, from their collectively tightened throat.