With less than a minute left on the clock, the Washington Capitals sat on a knife’s edge. Alex Ovechkin’s late-game marker had halved the Dallas Stars’ lead Saturday afternoon, but the Caps needed one more goal to force the game to overtime. So when Dylan Strome snuck the puck past goaltender Jake Oettinger with 43 seconds remaining, the team erupted into celebrations: Strome admitted to reporters postgame that he’d lost his voice yelling.
The officials, were, for a time, less convinced: a referee had blown the play dead just moments before the puck crossed the goal line. Washington has been burned by video reviews throughout the season, and it looked like they may lose yet another one. But this time, the goal stood.
“It was about time we got one go our way this year,” Strome said of the call.
Head coach Spencer Carbery felt good about the review due to a somewhat recent tweak in the NHL’s rulebook.
“I was fairly confident, just because that new rule that came in, that even if they blow the whistle and the puck is on its way in, that they can go back to that and say, ‘you know I was in the process of blowing it, I blew it, but the goal was going to go in,’” he said.
After the game, the NHL clarified the call, confirming Carbery’s suspicions. Here’s what the league had to say:
Video review supported the Referees’ call on the ice that Dylan Strome’s shot entered the Dallas net as the culmination of a continuous play. The decision was made in accordance with Rule 37.3 (i) which outlines goal situations subject to video review, such as a “Puck entering the net as the culmination of a continuous play where the result of the play was unaffected by any whistle blown by the Referee upon his losing sight of the puck.”
The Capitals have a rocky history with video reviews this season, particularly earlier in the year. They lost seven consecutive reviews to start the campaign–the first call to go their way came after American Thanksgiving. Carbery gave a wry smile Saturday as he thought back on some of those moments.
“So I was fairly confident that they were going to count [Strome’s goal], but this year I have found out very quickly that that may not have happened,” he said. “So it was nice for one of those to go our way.
This time, however, the hockey higher powers were on the Capitals’ side.
“Obviously, I’m a bit biased, but I feel like it was the right call,” Strome said. “The puck was sitting behind him, so obviously he can’t see that from where he was, but I could see it. So, that’s hockey sometimes and the hockey gods got us one tonight.”
