Well, last night Tampa Bay finally didn't get it's way with the officials. Two calls that Tampa Bay viewed as controversial didn't go their way against the Rangers, and John Tortorella got tossed from the game. For most people, seeing Torts go all nutso is a beautiful thing. The guy is a jerk, and needs to be kicked in the groin repeatedly until he loses as semblance of being a jerk.
But on to the calls. The second call was a wipe-out of a goal scored by TB that would have pulled them within 1, late in the second period. After the goal was scored, the Rangers defenseman and goalie immediately signaled that it was kicked. After the play was reviewed in Toronto, the league agree with the Rangers, and the goal was overturned.
The call before that is where I have an issue. The puck was in the air at the top of the TB zone. Shanahan tipped a puck well above the crossbar down on the ice, and the puck was then knocked by Nylander straight into the net. No goal right? The puck was OBVIOUSLY played by a high stick. Not quite. The NHL has given three different explinations as to why it wasn't a goal. In-house at MSG, the announcement was that "The play was not reviewable." Ok, that's not true, high sticks are reviewed all the time. The reason given during the intermission by the play-by-play guys for MSG was that "the official didn't blow the whistle quick enough after he saw the high stick. That's not true at all. If the official decides to blow his whistle, the play is dead, whether or not he blows his whistle. So that argument doesn't hold any water. The third reason given is that the NHL doesn't want to interrupt the flow of the game. That's BS. There was no flow at that point, the puck was in the net. So while the NHL continues to look for an excuse as to why the Rangers were handed a goal that they shouldn't have been. I imagine I'll be waiting a long time for this one.
It's nice to see something bad actually happen to Tampa on the referee side of things. This is a team that has traditionally been one of the least penalized, and most whiney teams when it comes to the officiating. If it wasn't Tampa Bay that this happened to, I'd be a little more concerned about what the league is saying about giving teams goals that shouldn't count.
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And this was one night after Tampa played an entire game against the Isles without being whistled for a single penalty (coming on the heels of a game in Montreal after which Torts bitched about the officiating).
As Ted Nolan said after Saturday's game, "They got all the calls tonight. I guess you complain, you get the calls. They complained pretty good in the papers the last couple of days, and we didn't get any calls our way."
So I guess whoever Tampa plays next shouldn't expect many powerplays.
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