Kukla's Korner

NHL Had The Chance To Make The Right Call- Congrats To Edmonton

Blog: KK Hockey By Paul

05/01/06 at 09:59 PM ET | Comments (0)

Obvious Edmonton high stick knocked down the puck near the Detroit goal.  Ensuing scramble, Edmonton scores.  Knocked down puck went directly to Samsonov and he scored on a goal that was also reviewed for a kicking motion.  Now I know replay cannot overrule a high stick call, only if a high stick caused the goal.  But something should have been done to eliminate that obvious high stick on the puck.
NHL spent about five minutes reviewing the play and awarded a goal.

Congrats to Edmonton for the victory, they were the better team and deserved to win.  When it mattered most, they did what they needed to do to win.

added 12:35am Tuesday, from Bob McKenzie of TSN,

Down 3-2 to Detroit with just four minutes left in the third period, Oilers forward Sergei Samsonov shot the puck towards the Red Wings net and the first question was whether centre Shawn Horcoff knocked it down with a high stick.
It didn’t matter because the referee wasn’t even looking for that.
What the officials were looking for was whether the puck was knocked into the net with a forward kicking motion.
There was a distinct kicking motion, but the question mark around the tying goal was whether the puck came off the foot of Oilers forward Ales Hemsky.
As a result, they had to go with referee Mick McGeough’s call that it was, in fact, a goal.

added 11:49am Tuesday, Word is starting to come down the NHL alerted the refs there was a high stick, but there was nothing they could do to make the call because that situation isn’t reviewable. That is why all of a sudden the officials came together and had a major conference in the officials’ crease ... they were asking if anyone saw the high stick, and nobody could say either they did or they did with 100 percent accuracy so they went to the next step and reviewed the goal itself.

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