What I'm hearing about the overtime goal debate with the Oilers and Ducks

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That’s because the NHL’s situation room leans on the call made by officials on the ice when conducting a goal review. In the case of Sunday night at Honda Center, the replay crew felt they had the footage needed to confirm that the puck entered the goal after trickling past Edmonton Oilers goaltender Tristan Jarry and ultimately getting pinned between Jarry’s skate and the white ice. Even with a small portion of the puck covered by the skate, decision-makers were confident about where the puck sat after going through a frame-by-frame review from the league’s Toronto head office. That made it a clear-cut decision from the NHL’s perspective, since the conclusion reached by the situation room aligned with the call made in real time by Brenk, St-Laurent and linesmen Tyson Baker and Trent Knorr – the on-ice officials who huddled for a brief consultation while the Ducks started celebrating around them. The tidal wave of debate that followed could be tied directly to the stakes of the ruling itself and, perhaps, the fact a lot of hockey fans on the East Coast were asleep when it happened, only to wake up hours later and start picking through the various threads associated with a goal call that gave Anaheim a surprising 3-1 series lead over a team that reached the last two Stanley Cup Final series. The only truly unanswerable question about the play that ended Game 4 was exactly what the officials saw on the ice to call it a goal. None of them were stationed particularly close to the net before making that judgment. The puck was only across the goal line for a fraction of a second before it was swept away by an Oilers player. Did one or more of the officials catch a glimpse of the puck while collapsing in toward the play? Were they influenced by the crowd or by Poehling enthusiastically pointing out it was in? Was there another tell? Fair questions, but unlike other pro sports leagues, the NHL does not make its officials available to speak postgame with a pool reporter to provide that kind of context or clarity. So they won’t be answered. Still, even in the event one of the referees had blown the play dead thinking Jarry had the puck frozen on Sunday night, the league’s situation room could still have reviewed the same footage and called it a goal – albeit with a greater degree of controversy because they’d effectively be overruling a decision made on the ice from 2,500 miles away. Over time, that’s likely to become more of an accepted norm. Given how fast the game is and how reliable the technology has become, one league source suggested there could even be a day when the rulebook is amended to the point where the on-ice officials aren’t required to make a goal call if a play is so close that they aren’t sure, effectively placing all of the power in the hands of the situation room. The NHL feels increasingly confident in its ability to make rulings due to the advancement of available camera equipment. Drawing footage from one placed inside the crossbar directly above the goal line brought extra confidence in the decision on the Poehling goal. Crossbar cameras have been used by the NHL for a decade now and come with far more certainty that there are no parallax or distorted views when gauging if a puck crossed the goal line, unlike the in-goal and in-post cameras that preceded them. As one league source put it: “We’ve got a straight down shot that’s not fooling you one way or the other. You’ve got a pure 100 percent look at what you’re seeing.” That allowed them to see the puck lying flat under Jarry’s skate and make a determination that it was beyond the line. It was much more clear-cut, say, than a play in which part of a goaltender’s glove enters the net while making a save, because in those cases it’s usually impossible to determine exactly where the puck is in the goalie’s glove. It may also help explain why there wasn’t too much anger to be found from the Oilers’ side amid the disappointment of a crushing loss. “I thought we were going to get away with it,” Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch said, and credit to him for the honesty. He only felt that way because there wasn’t a completely clear shot of the puck over the line. Knoblauch recognized that the only possible saving grace for Edmonton in that moment lay in the chance the goal was wiped out by a technicality. Effectively, the Oilers needed a hitch in the NHL’s process to somehow supersede the fact the puck ended up in the net. And even with Jarry’s skate impeding the view slightly, there was no internal debate among those tasked with making the call about how it should go. Said one league source: “You can draw a line right across the goal line and you know the puck is three inches wide. Common sense tells you that puck is in.” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms