I was thinking the infix operator needed to be used to dereference $hashref. Or more accurately, I guess I thought I could use it if I wanted and I chose to use it for consistency purposes. Plus it was just one thing I needed to remember instead of the various other ways to dereference and the docs I read suggested it might be easier to read.

So the suggestion works by-the-way. I'm still trying to understand why infix -> didn't work.