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NHL

Controversial Goal Gets Hurricanes Win

Posted Apr 21, 2009 10:45PM By Bruce Ciskie (RSS feed)

Filed Under: Devils, Hurricanes, Eastern

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The NHL playoffs have been a bit dull so far. There have been some dominating performances by great teams, and some of the underdogs clearly don't belong on the same ice. The best series, by far, has been New Jersey against Carolina. They did it again Tuesday night. The Hurricanes took a 3-0 lead, threatened to run away with the game, and promptly kicked the lead away. The Devils were the stronger team for much of the third, but could not take the lead. Just when we were looking at a third straight overtime game, the Hurricanes pulled a mighty large - and somewhat controversial - rabbit out of their hat.





The controversy comes in contact made between goal scorer Jussi Jokinen and Devils goalie Martin Brodeur (35 seconds into the above video). Replays shown after the play seemed to indicate that Brodeur left the crease intentionally, and after doing so, he bumped into Jokinen.

While the argument could be made that Jokinen knew exactly where Brodeur was, the officials on the ice ruled the contact was incidental. According to NHL.com's highly informative Situation Room Blog, the interference was not reviewed by the replay crew.
Play was reviewed to determine if the shot by Carolina's Jokinen crossed the line before time expired in the third period... the review determined that the puck crossed the line with 00.2 seconds left - good goal for Carolina.
In addition, the league also issued a statement through that blog about the goalie interference ruling.
The NHL's goalie interference rule sets a mandate to protect the goalie in the blue ice – to let the goalie do his job. In the white ice, it is a more delicate matter, including who moved into whom. The referee has one split-second look at it and it is a judgment call. The Situation Room has no video review capacity in this instance. That said, the Situation Room officials agreed with the call on the ice, that it looked like the goalie, Martin Brodeur, moved out toward the skater.
Here's a look at NHL Rule 69.1, which governs goaltender interference.
Goals should be disallowed only if: (1) an attacking player, either by his positioning or by contact, impairs the goalkeeper's ability to move freely within his crease or defend his goal; or (2) an attacking player initiates intentional or deliberatecontact with a goalkeeper, inside or outside of his goal crease. Incidental contact with a goalkeeper will be permitted, and resulting goals allowed, when such contact is initiated outside of the goal crease, provided the attacking player has made a reasonable effort to avoid such contact. The rule will be enforced exclusively in accordance with the on-ice judgement of the Referee(s), and not by means of video replay or review.
Honestly, I'm not sure this is so cut-and-dried. While it's obvious to me that Brodeur left his crease on his own, it was also kind of clear that Jokinen knew where Brodeur was and made no effort to avoid him. Everyone knows Brodeur likes to hang out on the edge of that blue paint.

The key words to focus on are "provided the attacking player has made a reasonable effort to avoid such contact". Jokinen made no effort to avoid the contact.

That said, is it fair to charge Jokinen with goalie interference when he had his back to Brodeur the whole time and was clearly well outside the crease?

Absolutely not. You can't avoid contact that you don't see coming.

The officials on the ice got the call right. It would have been difficult to argue against the call had it gone the other way, because it does look like Jokinen is fine making contact with the goalie in that situation. Even outside of the blue paint, such contact is not allowed.

Brodeur can complain all he wants (and he did throw a tantrum that would have embarrassed me had it been thrown by my seven-year-old son), but the series is tied at two wins apiece. The critical Game Five will be played Thursday night in Newark.

Tags: 2009+stanley+cup+playoffs, 2009StanleyCupPlayoffs, jussi+jokinen, JussiJokinen, martin+brodeur, MartinBrodeur

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