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On Black Friday, the Boston Bruins defeated the visiting Pittsburgh Penguins by a 5-4 score after David Pastrnak put his team ahead to stay early in the third period. At 17:44 of the second period, an initially disallowed Sidney Crosby goal was reversed on replay.
During the sequence in question, Crosby took two swings at an uncovered loose puck, which happened to be to laying upon Boston goalie Anton Khudobin's chest with the goalie flat on his back after making an acrobatic skate save on an initial point shot. However, as Crosby was in the process of scoring the goal, play was being blown dead. The goal was disallowed.
Upon video review, the call was reversed based on the principle that it was a continuous play in which the whistle was irrelevant to the goal being scored. This led to the predictable conspiracy theories about "special rules being 'invented' by the NHL/officials to benefit Crosby."
Once again, this is a case of people not knowing the NHL Rule Book. However, the NHL does itself no favors on this one, as I will explain momentarily. First for the rule itself. A few years ago, the NHL loosened the once-iron clad nature of the intent-to-blow-the-whistle call if a goal is scored after an official loses sight of the puck but the puck enters the net before the whistle itself is blown.
The new rule, in theory, was a good one. Formerly Rule 38.4 (viii) and now 38.4 (ix), the rule states in part:
The video review process shall be permitted to assist the Referees in determining the legitimacy of all potential goals (e.g. to ensure they are “good hockey goals…).... This would also include situations whereby the Referee stops play or is in the process of stopping the play because he has lost sight of the puck and it is subsequently determined by video review that the puck crosses (or has crossed) the goal line and enters the net as the culmination of a continuous play where the result was unaffected by the whistle (i.e., the timing of the whistle was irrelevant to the puck entering the net at the end of a continuous play).
In the blog I wrote when the Rule was added, I noted that I was all in favor of the rule change on a theoretical basis but I was concerned about how it would be communicated and applied. It created yet another self-contradiction in the NHL Rule Book.
The intent-to-blow-the-whistle rule itself is still in the Rule Book in unchanged form. The new instruction was added to a different section of the Rule Book, explicitly to empower the overturning of no-goal rulings in cases where a still-moving puck (i.e., continuous play) enters the net while the referee is in the process of blowing play dead after losing sight of the puck. However, there is also catch-all wording that video can be used to determine the legitimacy of all goals, which was guaranteed to cause controversy and confusion.
In real-life practice, Rule 38.4 (ix) has rarely been used to reverse calls.
Earlier this season, for example, in a game between the Philadelphia Flyers and Ottawa Senators, a would-be game-tying goal by Philadelphia's Sean Couturier in the final minute of play was disallowed due to the referee losing sight of the puck. What happened in this instance was that Couturier jammed the puck off the side of the net on a first attempt and, on the second, jammed it under goalie Craig Anderson's pad and into Anderson's glove, which was entirely inside the net. Anderson then pulled his glove back into his body. The whistle blew as the puck was being swept back inside the goalie's glove.
This was a clear-cut case of a continuous play -- the puck was moving all along, including sliding beneath Anderson's pad at the precise moment the official lost sight. In the blink of an eye of real time, however, it looked like a spectacular glove save by Anderson. This sort of sequence is precisely why the revised rule was created.
However, after pausing to watch the replay, it was declared by the NHL's Situation Room that the play was not reviewable on video in the first place because it wasn't a continuous play. As such, the intent-to-blow-the-whistle standard applied. It was a weak and incorrect explanation because the puck was clearly in motion all along and the whistle was consequently irrelevant to the would-be goal. The reality of what happened was that someone screwed up, whether it was on the ice or in Toronto or both. The bottom line is that the rule was not properly applied.
The Crosby goal reversal was actually an instance of the rule being applied correctly, as long as the puck momentarily sitting on top of Khudobin was deemed a continuous play -- to me, rebounds ARE continuous plays, but there was a delay with the puck technically not moving so this one could be interpreted different ways. The bigger problem here wasn't the play itself.
The problem is that, as with so many rule and procedural changes in the NHL, Rule 38.4 (ix) is poorly communicated and ill-understood. As such, it has rarely been applied correctly. There are no conspiracies, here, folks. It had nothing to do with the Penguins or Sidney Crosby. It's just another case of a too-hasty new rule not being worded clearly or taught effectively.
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Paul Stewart holds the distinction of being the first U.S.-born person to make it to the NHL as both a player and referee. On March 15, 2003, he became the only American-born referee to officiate in 1,000 NHL games.