NHL explains why Predators goal didn't count

Joe Rexrode | The Tennessean

Show Caption Hide Caption Stanley Cup Final ends in heartbreak for Predators The city of Nashville stood behind their Predators to the very end. Unfortunately the cup still ended up in Pittsburgh's hands.

If you’re moving on now from the Predators’ season-ending loss in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final and don’t wish to revisit the controversial details of that 2-0 defeat, stop here.

If you’re clamoring for an answer from the NHL on the Predators' goal that wasn’t a goal early in the second period, I’ve got one for you. You may not be satisfied, but it’s something. And there’s no change from the initial impression: Official Kevin Pollock messed up when he blew the whistle early on a play that saw Colton Sissons poke in a rebound, but not reviewing and overruling that play was correct application of the NHL rule book.

“The way the play was called in Nashville was the proper way it should be called,” John Dellapina, vice president of communications for the NHL, said Tuesday. “Once the whistle is blown, there is no mechanism in our rules to overrule that call.”

There are a couple of problems here. One, here’s the way it’s written in the NHL rule book, rule 38.4 viii:

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”). For example (but not limited to), pucks that enter the net by going through the net meshing, pucks that enter the net from underneath the net frame, pucks that hit the spectator netting prior to being directed immediately into the goal, pucks that enter the net undetected by the Referee, etc. 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).

That would seem to suggest that the Sissons goal could have been reviewed – Filip Forsberg put the puck on net, it squirted free from goalie Matt Murray and Sissons immediately popped it into the net. That seems “continuous” to me.

But “continuous” actually has a more specific definition, per Dellapina. This would have been continuous only “if Forsberg’s initial shot continued into the net,” he said.

“But once Sissons played the puck, it no longer was a continuous play under our definition,” Dellapina said.

Here’s the other problem: As seen in a clip sent to me by Predators TV play-by-play announcer Willy Daunic, the Calgary Flames got a goal just like this against Buffalo early in the season. The whistle blew, the goal was scored on a rebound and not the initial shot, it was reviewed and the initial ruling of no goal was overruled.

So I sent that clip to Dellapina. His response was that he won’t discuss comparisons of one scoring play to another.

Let me translate that for you and say what he can’t: The officials in Calgary really screwed up and applied the rule incorrectly. That’s the outlier, and it makes this whole thing worse for Predators fans. I can hear some of them now: “Conspiracy!”

That’s not it. Believe me, the NHL would have loved for this series to go to Game 7. And I believe the NHL would have loved to see Nashville win it, too. Nashville is the model for what Commissioner Gary Bettman has been trying to do for a long time in expanding his sport.

This was simply an official making a terrible mistake at a terrible time. The NHL should probably look at this rule in the offseason. And it absolutely has to get better at expressing its rules clearly.

Reach Joe Rexrode at jrexrode@tennessean.com and follow him on Twitter @joerexrode.