EDMONTON — They got the call right, but there will be NHL fans who decades from now say they didn’t and that it robbed the Florida Panthers of a goal that could have been a momentum-changer with the Stanley Cup on the line.
Talk about the ultimate game of inches.
League officials needed to zoom in on the video and go frame by frame to determine that Sam Reinhart was a fraction of a skateblade offside during a review that ultimately took Aleksander Barkov’s goal off the scoreboard on Friday night.
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This wasn’t just any goal. It’s one that shifted the direction of Game 6 and could haunt the Panthers if they let this series slip away after leading it 3-0.
“You’re looking for a jump-start at that point,” Florida coach Paul Maurice said, reflecting on the offside review after his team’s 5-1 loss to the Edmonton Oilers. “It would have been a spark for us, for sure.”
Barkov briefly quieted Rogers Place when he fired a puck past Oilers goalie Stuart Skinner at 19:04 of the second period — a huge response 10 seconds after Adam Henrique scored to make it 2-0 for Edmonton. The public address announcer didn’t even have the chance to call out Henrique’s goal when Barkov finished off that rush.
Panthers response goal gets challenged as an offside play. After review, the goal is overturned.
That's the 4th offside challenge of the playoffs (excluding hockey ops) — coaches are now 3-1.
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— Shayna (@hayyyshayyy) June 22, 2024
However, Oilers video coach Noah Segall radioed to assistant coach Mark Stuart on the bench and triggered a review because he felt that Reinhart had gained the offensive zone just before teammate Carter Verhaeghe carried the puck over the blue line.
It was a massive call, especially for Segall, who is in just his second NHL season and first as the No. 1 video coach for the Oilers.
Edmonton would have been assessed a minor penalty for delay of game had the review gone against the Oilers. The team put its trust in the video coach to make the right call and it paid off.
“I actually didn’t think it was that close,” Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch said. “We were going to call it right away. The only hesitation was maybe there wasn’t the right video. In my mind, it was definitely offside, but I guess you never know. It was something we wanted to challenge almost immediately when we saw it.”
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On the opposite bench, Maurice lost his mind when the decision was made to rule it offside. He shouted expletives in the direction of the officials and said later that he wouldn’t have challenged the play if the situation was reversed based on the video made available to him on the Panthers bench.
“There was no way I thought you could conclusively say that was offside,” Maurice said. “I don’t know what (replay angles) the Oilers get. I don’t know what the league gets. I just know that I wouldn’t have challenged that based on what I saw.
“I’m not saying it’s not offside. We’ll get still frames. We’ll bring in the CIA. We’ll figure it out. But in the 30 seconds that I would have (to make) that call, I would not have challenged.”
One of the linesmen told Maurice that it was the last clip the officials saw during the review that confirmed to them that Reinhart entered the zone a split second ahead of the puck.
Game of inches (or maybe less) 👀 pic.twitter.com/wcL2Tb7uQO
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) June 22, 2024
None of the Panthers players were aware there was an issue in real time.
“I had no idea, no,” Verhaeghe said.
“Not in real time, but I guess it was offside,” Barkov said. “So that’s it.”
They had been thoroughly outplayed in the first period, getting outshot 11-2 by the Oilers, but felt a surge of enthusiasm when their captain made a big play. It had to be difficult to digest when that goal was taken off the board and Edmonton eventually made it 3-0 on a breakaway strike from Zach Hyman before the second intermission.
Given the circ*mstances and situation, with the Panthers in position to potentially lift the Stanley Cup, it was easily one of the biggest coach’s challenge reviews since the NHL introduced that rule in 2015.
But we should probably get used to it since the league’s general managers proposed to expand the number of situations that can be challenged and reviewed during their March meeting to include instances where a player is penalized for a high-sticking infraction or for shooting the puck over the glass from his own end.
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In other words, we’re going to get more video reviews, not less, in the years ahead.
That kind of challenge was not available to either team for perhaps the most infamous goal in Stanley Cup Final history: when Brett Hull scored in triple overtime to secure the Dallas Stars a series-clinching win over Buffalo during the 1999 Final despite his foot appearing to be in the crease, which was against NHL rules at the time.
Depending on how Game 7 plays out Monday night, the Panthers may eventually find themselves looking back on Barkov’s goal in Game 6 and the ensuing offside review with a thought of “What if?”
While they seemed to concede that the league ultimately made the right call on the play, they didn’t hide their disdain for the fact it was something that could happen at all after a sequence that wasn’t recognizable to any of the four officials on the ice in real time.
“I mean, it sucks that it didn’t go our way, but that’s above my head,” Verhaeghe said. “They obviously get the right call. I’m sure it’s the right call if they’re watching a million replays.”
(Photo: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
Chris Johnston is a senior writer covering the NHL for The Athletic. He has two decades of experience as an NHL Insider, having appeared on Hockey Night in Canada and the NHL Network before joining TSN in 2021. He currently hosts the "Chris Johnston Show" on the Steve Dangle Podcast Network. He's written previously for the Toronto Star, Sportsnet and The Canadian Press. Follow Chris on Twitter @reporterchris
