Thoughts on Steve Ott’s “Goal” and the Detroit – Dallas Game

So here’s the recap…

Steve Ott slips a shot between Jimmy Howard’s pads. It trickles to the goal line before Howard gets to it and the near ref says no goal. Patrick Eaves gets ready to shoot.

But wait… We’ve got video review. A lengthy video review proves inconclusive so the call on the ice stands. The problem is that during the review one ref and one linesman who were further away from the ref who made the initial call say that they conclusively saw the puck go over the goal line. Two outvote one, the call on the ice is overturned, it’s a goal.

So what happened is two people who were further away saw something that no video could corroborate. They so firmly believed what they saw that they refused to accept the near ref’s call and overturned it.

I firmly believe that the wrong call was made. Which means that those two officials weren’t just wrong. They were so certain about seeing something that didn’t happen that they overturned the correct call. That is a gross abuse of power.

I’ve heard the arguments about how it shouldn’t matter. The Wings gave up a two goal lead to get to this point. “They should have scored more goals if they wanted to win.”

That’s a flawed point and the people making it know it. The team scoring the most goals wins, not the team that scores more goals than the other team plus an arbitrary number of additional goals that may or may not be awarded by luck.

There’s also the argument that Patrick Eaves still could have scored to tie it. Which, of course, ignores that any goal of his would have been a game-winner.

In the end, what can you say to it? No one of consequence will admit to the wrong call being made. That wouldn’t fix things anyway.