Insurance Company Behaves Like Insurance Company, Voids Incredible Charity Hockey Shot

Richard Marsh was randomly selected from the crowd at an Indiana Ice home game last Saturday. His challenge: to hit a hockey puck, which is about three inches wide, the length of the rink and into a target slightly larger than three inches wide. AllState Insurance, the promotion's sponsors, pledged to donate $50,000 to St. Vincent's Cardiovascular of Indiana and the American Heart Association in the extremely unlikely event that someone would make the shot. But Marsh did, the crowd went wild, and then a third-party insurance company covering the event fulfilled the prevailing sense that insurance companies are mostly awful by refusing to pay the charity bill — because Marsh wasn't standing behind the far goal line.

There's no sound in the video above, so we can't hear the crowd of 4,500 erupting in gleeful goodwill at Marsh's shot, but we can add to the groans of disbelief that, yes, the insurance company actually refused to give money to the heart doctors because of a stupid technicality. The Indiana Ice owners, Paul and Cindy Skjodt, offer some restoration to humanity: the couple has donated its own money "in recognition of [Marsh's] accomplishment" to the two charities. Upon further (agonizing) review, Ice fan's $50K shot voided [Indianapolis Star] After hockey fan's $50,000 goal, charities almost get hosed [Yahoo! Puck Daddy]