The Washington Capitals must have felt like they were the subject of a cruel joke against the Detroit Red Wings on Thursday.
Clinging to a 3-1 lead late in the third period, the Red Wings scored two 6-on-5 goals in the final 1:40 of regulation to force overtime. While the Red Wings’ first 6-on-5 goal took some skill, their game-tying goal with 53 seconds remaining was one of the strangest bounces in NHL history.
“It was an odd game. It really was,” Red Wings head coach Todd McLellan said.
Alex DeBrincat was the beneficiary of an insane redirect where his dump-in went off the glass and directly into the net, ricocheting past a beleaguered Charlie Lindgren.
“Just tried to rim it around,” DeBrincat said after the game. “I’m not sure what it hit, maybe the dasher or whatever. I saw it come off and go off something, and I knew it had a chance to go in. Those ones are pretty tricky. Obviously, a lucky bounce.”
“I mean, I just saw him dump it in,” Dylan Larkin said. “He jumped up. I was just going to forecheck, so I didn’t even see it. It’s hard to track pucks on the glass. There are black seats and people there. You kind of just wait for it to come down. Good bounce for us… finally.”
The goal was Debrincat’s 30th goal of the season — the fifth time he’s hit the mark in his career.
“A lot of credit to [my teammates] and some credit to those bounces I get today,” DeBrincat said, smirking.
But calling the goal a good bounce doesn’t really do it justice. As explained by Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery, the dumped-in puck struck the photographer-controlled camera hole glass along the cornerboards.
“I’ve never seen that before,” Carbery said. “For people who don’t know, there’s a camera hole that’s covered up with plexiglass in the corner so people can take live pictures without the glass in the way. So we have it in the slo-mo (video), he opens the hole to put his camera through, then sees the puck is getting rimmed around, and goes, ‘Uh oh!’
“There’s basically a thing that slides in to close that hole, and it hits right there, and the piece that slides there goes exploding behind the person. I don’t know if you’ll ever see that again in that situation. It goes directly into the net.”
John Carlson immediately argued with officials his belief that the goal should be waved off. Officials reviewed footage of the play, but ultimately ruled that it was legal.
“The league just said — I think the actual rule is, if the camera is through and then it’s obstructing, and it goes past the goalie, they’d call it back,” Carbery explained. “But because it was just the glass open or partially open, that it’s a good goal.”
After the game, the NHL posted an official explanation on their website.
Type of Challenge: Missed Game Stoppage Event – Puck Out of Bounds
Result: Original call confirmed – Goal Detroit
Explanation: The Situation Room supported the Referee’s call on the ice that the puck remained in the playing area at all times, making contact with the camera hole cover that was closed and in its proper position. The decision was made in accordance with Rule 38.10.
NOTE: In the final minute of play in the third period and at any point in overtime (regular season and playoffs), Hockey Operations will initiate the review of any scenario that would otherwise be subject to a Coach’s Challenge.
The Detroit News’ Dave Guralnick was the photographer manning the corner when DeBrincat’s dump-in struck the glass.
“I’ve been doing this a long time, and that’s the first time the puck hit the hole square-on,” Guralnick said. “The force of the puck knocked the glass into my lap. The puck just careened in a weird way, which caught the goalie off guard and slipped under his pads.”
He added that someone on the Capitals was “extremely angry” with him. The unnamed player reminded him that he needed to keep the hole closed when the puck was near.
“It was closed,” he countered. “If it wasn’t closed, I would probably be on the way to the emergency room right now because it was hit with full force.”
Nic Dowd, who won the game for the Capitals in the shootout, believed that the goal was so strange that the NHL should review the play and potentially create a rule to negate goals that come from the camera hole in the future.
“The third goal is probably something you’ll never see again,” Dowd said. “It’s something the NHL should fix moving forward, just in case that would ever happen again.”
