Photo Credit: The Associated Press
I hate to reopen some painful wounds, but if you were following the Stanley Cup Playoffs, you’ll want to take a look at this. Sportsnet’s Chris Johnston recently reported that the NHL took a look at the lengthy 93 playoff games played in 2014, and decided after a long hard review, several goals should not have been allowed. Now, there is no guarantee that the outcome would have been different, but it is definitely possible that the series could have gone on a bit longer than we experienced.
If you recall, during the second game of the potential 7 game series between the underdogs from New York and the high power team from Tinseltown, the Rangers, and the Kings, a mistake may have been made. The Rangers took the lead with a score of 4-2 with 18 minutes left in the period. Dwight King scored a goal on Henrik Lundqvist that looked questionable. No matter where you were at that moment, I’m sure you clearly remember the current captain and defenseman, Ryan McDonagh, trying to cover his teammate who was in the crease, but instead, fell on top of him, preventing him from making the save.
If you’re a Ranger fan, or you were rooting for them to bring the cup back to the East Coast, you definitely wanted that goal to be taken away, of course at the time, it was not overturned, but now, officials are saying it should have been. In retrospect, and as a Rangers fan, you will want to believe that the goal would have definitely changed the fate of the Rangers, but that is something we will never be sure of.
That goal for the Kings set the momentum for them and with the way Marian Gaborik was playing, the comeback they made was possible from the start. It set the team off and they took full advantage of the energy, which allowed Gaborik to tie the game, leading them to overtime and winning the game, making them two games ahead of the Rangers for the series. Of course, if that third goal scored by King had been overturned, the Rangers could have potentially won the second game, tying them with the Kings at one. This would have given game five, the final game of the series an entirely different meaning.
Nobody is perfect, but when it comes to something as professional as this, we can all agree that mistakes of this sort should not be acceptable. Now, in November, it is too late of course to do anything about that particular situation now, but it can stand as a lesson for the future playoff rounds.
We do not know if the hailing team from New York would have won the Stanley Cup if this minor mistake had been looked at further, but we know that it definitely would have changed the series and made it gone on a little longer. Though, I am not sure us die-hard Rangers fans would have wanted it to be prolonged any further.
If you have an opinion, comments, or want to share your thoughts on the situation and how it makes you feel, go ahead and sound off in the comments below!
