On the Kane Goal and Shaw Interference

Not surprisingly, there’s already been a lot of talk about Patrick Kane’s goal (or, more precisely, the uncalled penalty immediately prior to it) and the apparent Chicago goal immediately following it that was called back due to goalie interference.

We’ve seen the “Two wrongs make a right” theory (a penalty should have been called which would have negated Kane’s goal so the wrong call was made on the Shaw interference to make up for it), the “Holmstrom Interpretation” (what Shaw did was cause for many negated goals when Tomas Holmstrom did it) and the “What if a Blackhawk had been boarded and a Wings’ goal disallowed” scenario.

I hate the idea of make-up calls. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what happened here but they’ll never admit it, especially since they can hide behind the Holmstrom Interpretation if they want.

I also can’t get behind the idea that changing something later to make up for something that happens earlier actually makes up for it, as we have no idea how things would have played out if the first call had been made differently. Maybe the Red Wings would have scored on their power play rather than Kane scoring and it would have been a drastically different 3-0 game. We’ll never know.

I want to run with the “what if” scenario, though, and give it a different twist. What if the disallowed goal had come first?

It seems to me that disallowing what would have been a second goal to make up for the first being allowed when it shouldn’t have (what we may have seen unfold tonight) causes much more of an uproar than the reverse. If a ‘Hawks goal had been called back on a weak goalie interference claim and then Chicago scored on a play where a penalty should have been called, I just get the feeling that it would have been seen as more “correct” than what actually happened, even though the result (as far as the score goes) is the same.

Or maybe that’s just late-night rambling from me. I don’t know.