fractalnavel

[hey, i should get a chance to create a bad sports headline every now and then too.]

phantom save by lightning steals cup from calgary

as one news report has it:

Calgary almost won it on a power play midway through the third, but Nikolai Khabibulin stuck out his right leg to stop Martin Gelinas' rebound attempt perilously close to the goal line. Multiple TV replays did not conclusively show the puck crossing the line.

"It's got to be conclusive," Sutter said. "I looked at it from two different angles, and unless they have a different one, you can't say that it's a goal.

"We reviewed a number of camera angles and only one showed the puck," NHL director of hockey operations Colin Campbell said. "From that angle, it was inconclusive whether the puck crossed the goal line... there was insufficient evidence."

what a load of crap.  funny how they have half a dozen or more ways to view the goal, used all the time, but on that play we were shown only two.  and in one of the shots, you could see the full disc of the puck flat against the ice, with about half to three-quarters of a puck width of white ice between it and the goal line - inside the line !  as the camera goes on to show, the puck rebounds off the goalie's right pad - again, clearly inside the net.  now, unless the goalie was waving his leg around in the air above himself in some anatomically impossible position, there is no way for that image of puck inside the goal to be illusory.  imbeciles.

what really happened is a screw up in the officiating process, not so much on the ice, as those officials obviously did not and likely could not have seen the play, but in the communications process that a review was underway.  play should have been stopped until they were finished, and clearly there was no announcement until _after_ the chance to reverse the call was past.  so, with the problem having already irreversibly occurred, they instead try and cover it up.

the ballsy thing to have done would have been to admit the error, but i'm not sure what that would mean practically, given the rules.  what a debacle (where's howard cosell when you need him?).  anyway, i consider the rest of the stanley cup finals to be merely exhibition play from this point on.  in reality, calgary won the cup by the end of regulation time in game six, and the ot's and game seven were unnecessary.  and in the sports books, please, let's have a _big_ one of these if tampa bay “wins” it:

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lord stanley should be rolling in his grave.