Between this and seeing Lilja get that delay of game penalty the other night, which resulted in the Wings losing, I am starting to laugh at this league and game more and more…
the delay of game penalty for a player throwing the puck over the glass in the defensive zone (when it is unintentional), is the stupidest rule ever. There are much worse things that happen on the ice during the game that should be called than this… and for it to affect the outcome of a game is just stupid. I can understand the reasoning behind the rule and agree with it, *if* the player *intentionally* throws it over the glass to get themselves out of a tough situation/offensive press. But not when it is completely unintentional.

Both of these (nets, terrible replay/review rules/setup, and delay of game penalties) are examples of how Bettman and the league have tried changing the game and its rules to make it better… and both have ended up making it worse. And they wonder why fans are pissed. Get a clue!!!

I like Coach Babcock’s approach to the situation:

“The puck went up and hit the thing, rolls down, comes down the boards, rolls out front. Those referees do their job no different than we do, with as much pride as they can. They missed it. When you look at the video like all of us do, it seems very obvious. But we looked at the video. I didn’t see the puck, either.”

He makes a good point sometimes we just lose sight of the puck. It happens to everyone, and yes, that even happens to refs, Matt. I think early on in the post you came down a bit hard on the refs when your ultimate conclusion was that we need a rule change to allow for video review:

“Give your officials some support so they don’t have to bear the brunt of the fans’ ire for blowing a call that could be overturned by video evidence.”

A simple re-design of the nets will solve the issue.

To have a goal count when it is clear that in fact the puck went out of play (no ifs or maybes) is sad and pathetic. And I don’t see why everything has to go through the “war room” in Toronto - give the goal judge a job and let him view the monitor and make the call in the arena if it is that obvious of a call. I don’t like to see any team get robbed because of a simple mistake like that - no interpretation or shades of gray, just a bad call.

Although it’s too bad that if the official was “thinking about blowing the whistle” it didn’t count as a dead puck, the way it does so often when a puck is semi-covered and then whacked into the net, but he rules it was too late because he was planning on blowing the whistle.

I wonder if that is why whenever the puck goes out of play, I remember how Chelios would indicate that very emphatically so the officials would be sure to notice? Maybe he’s seen that kind of thing before.