A player shoots the puck; the goalie fails to keep the puck from crossing the goal line. The referee blows the whistle after the puck is across the goal line. This has been the definition of a goal in a hockey game for over a century. When did we start getting this one wrong?
I, along with all the fans at the Joe knew it was in. Dallas knew it was in. The fans in Dallas knew it was in. All of the Red Wings fans watching the game on TV knew it was in. Ken and Mick and even Larry knew it was in. Anyone watching Ken and Mick and Larry on the center ice package knew that it was in. Anyone logged on to NHL.com who was watching the game on their computer knew it was in. The people in the War Room in Toronto knew it was in. Even Gary, sitting atop his ivory tower ran down to the basement where Sidney has been living and told him that was a goal. But Dennis LaRue said it wasn’t, and thus…the goal doesn’t count.
That’s one person…out of thousands and thousands of people who knew it was a goal. One man said it wasn’t and thus it wasn’t. “The whistle had gone to blow the play dead.” Yes, we understand that, Dennis. That is what happens when a goal is scored, When you blew the whistle and skated over to the net with Abdelkader pointing and yelling, “It’s in! It’s in!” you must have noticed that the puck was completely over the line. When you got the call from Toronto, Dennis, they told you that the puck was over the line.
“What was the call on the ice?” Toronto says.
“I blew the play dead because I thought the puck was covered by the goalie,” Dennis replies.
“Well it was covered, behind the goal line.”
“Well I didn’t think it was.”
Therefore, it isn’t a goal? About 2.5-3 seconds after the puck had crossed the line, Mr. LeRue pulled out his whistle and blew it. Why do we even have instant replay? Seriously. If we can’t fix a monumental mistake such as that, we should just get rid of the entire instant replay system and revert back to the Bud Selig ways of Major League Baseball. You have a chance to right a wrong and the rules are set up in such a way that they prevent the right call from being made.
Let me say that again in a different way: the rules are set up so that mistakes can be made and that corrective actions simply cannot be taken.
That, my friends, is a flawed system. Oh and of course, this happens days after the GM meetings conclude…perfect.
Instant replay was instituted so that human errors could be corrected in an attempt to make sure that the game is fair as possible and the correct team wins. Well, that system broke down last night…again. The people on the NHL Network say “They get it right 99.9% of the time, and this time they got it wrong.” Sound familiar? It should, it’s the same B.S. argument we heard during Game 3 of the Western Conference Semi-Finals last season where Brad Watson “intended to blow the whistle” cancelling out a game-tying goal that went in before he could muster any air out of his pie hole. This was less than 30 games ago. Still want to think that they’re right 99.9% of the time? Those are two games (one of them a play-off game) that have been swayed by a wrong call that was not corrected.
Are we going to see an apology? Don’t make me laugh. We are going to get the same story we got when Brad Watson singlehandedly robbed us of a chance to get out of that Anaheim series a game earlier. The league will back the officials to the bitter end, no matter how badly he blew the call.
And he blew this one big time.
