I would prefer that the skater just skate to the bench and grab a stick.
It takes 10 seconds at most to skate to the far bench (center ice) and back so that's about 10 seconds of being on the PK.
Staying in the zone without your stick allows the other team to setup a perfect play and you're effectively playing shorthanded for longer than 10 seconds.
The situation gets a lot worse if the other team is able to put extended pressure and your team ends up taking a penalty, now you're shorthanded for more than 2 minutes.
In the qualifier game, 2 of the Leafs players broke their sticks, and after awhile, Matthews decided to just dash to the bench while the other team had clean possession. I wish our players did that as well when they break their stick.
I was shocked when Rieder broke his stick near the bench (I think it was 2nd period, so we were closer to the offensive zone) and then decided to skate back into our D zone instead of just changing.
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