Sidney Crosby, seething and rightly so, stood at his stall to show me why.
Still wearing his skates several minutes after the Penguins had fallen short of the Flames, 2-1, tonight at PPG Paints Arena, he turned the toes of both boots slightly apart, then straightened them, to demonstrate how he'd made every effort to dodge Calgary's Devin Cooley and the goaltender interference call that'd cost his team the tying goal with 7:03 remaining in regulation.
Press play on this:
See how Sid's initially waiting on the puck with the toes apart?
OK, then see how Kevin Bahl bangs into him, so that Sid then makes contact with Cooley, so that Cooley then goes down as if he's been blasted by an elephant gun?
Uh-huh, that.
"It looks bad," Sid would acknowledge, "but, you know, being in the play, I felt like I did my best to try to avoid the goalie, and I got pushed into him. I mean, the explanation had something to do with being in the crease, but you're allowed in the crease as long as you don't impede the goalie. And I was trying to get through there and got pushed back into him."
Slight pause.
"He did a good job of selling it, you know?"
Meaning Cooley.
"I grazed him and he went down pretty easy. I mean, that's what you're gonna do. It's a hard one to challenge and it doesn't look great, but I know I was gonna get around him if I didn't get pushed."
So ... yeah. There went the six-game winning streak, and this against ne of the NHL's bona fide bottom-feeders. There'd be a couple other chances the rest of the way, but nothing Cooley, armed with a .918 save percentage, couldn't handle amid 27 total saves.
Why didn't Dan Muse challenge?
That doesn't look great, either, to borrow Sid's phrasing, particularly with a throbbing crowd of 18,322 -- one of the biggest and most boisterous of the season -- booing its collective lungs out for most of those final seven minutes.
Not going to lie: I wondered this myself. Still do. Goals weren't about to come easily, and I'm not sure the deterrent -- a team's hit with a minor penalty, of course, if a challenge fails -- outweighed the potential value of getting that goal in that moment.
"Every challenge that happens in the league, you look at them, and they're all a little bit different, but we're always evaluating," Muse would try to explain. "I felt like ... yes, we did consider it, but I didn't think that we had a chance. I felt like we'd be just going on the penalty kill, you know, which ... they're not easy decisions, but that's what I felt at the time, that this was an extremely low, chance of coming back worse based on what I've seen in the league."
He has a case. And, although management's not about to share, I'll bet, he's got data to support it. Kyle Dubas and his analytics team study all facets of the NHL game, including officiating, and I've been made directly aware -- including after this -- after other similar scenes this season that the way the goaltender interference rule's been called has been especially vexing for everyone involved. No one seems to know, as they'll attest, what exactly constitutes goaltender interference.
But this, I was told here, was the main reason for no challenge this time: If the attacking player enters the crease area on his own -- as Sid did -- that's got a near-zero chance of being overturned by replay officials in Toronto. And again, they had data.
Whatever. There's another one in less than 24 hours.
JOE SARGENT / GETTY
Rickard Rakell skates up ice in the first period Saturday.
• Besides, being blunt, that's not where this one was lost.
This was the opening shift of the third period. Watch nobody but Novak:
That's not OK. He was placed on the top line to replace Bryan Rust, who was scratched for a lower-body injury, and he needed to be the first forward tracking back. Well, he was, as can be seen above, but that's nowhere near enough exertion toward keeping Matt Coronato from cutting right between the hashes, then casually picking his spot on Arturs Silovs.
Winning goal right there. Can't happen.
Know what else can't happen?
How about the Flames emerging from the second intermission with visibly more energy?
Or, for that matter, the Flames emerging that way from the opening faceoff?
I brought this up with Muse:
"I think we got away from what was working in the second," he'd reply. "They had odd-man rushes, obviously, not just on the goals against but some of the follow-up shifts. We got away from it. And I think we weren’t able to find it until the little bit in the back half of the third period. We gotta play a more consistent game than we did there."
"I don’t think we came out like we have lately in the first period," Anthony Mantha would say. "Lately, we’ve been doing the opposite of that, and it’s been really good for our team."
Nowhere to hide from that.
• Nor the 15 giveaways, notably a team-high three from Novak.
• No giveaway could've been more gruesome than this from Ryan Shea:
Hard to fathom that one, huh?
Shea and Jack St. Ivany had some miserable metrics, in general, continuing to cast doubt on management's odd push to reinvent the third defense pairing even after they'd appeared to have a pretty good one in Connor Clifton and Ryan Graves. Maybe should've just taken yes for an answer.
• What a pass by Evgeni Malkin, what a finish by Egor Chinakhov ...
... and what an amazing roughing minor on Geno, for wanting nothing more in the moment than to robustly celebrate with Chinakhov. Not sure I'd ever seen that.
• Credit where due: Calgary played hard from front to finish -- "This was a big game for us," Coronato would say afterward -- and extended one of the strangest streaks in the sport by being 9-0-2 in their past 11 games against the Metro. The Flames don't score much, and they didn't here, either, but it's not like they're New Jersey-ing their way through the schedule.
• Everyone loves Ben Kindel. Impossible not to. But I'd be remiss if not pointing out that it's been 12 games since he's scored, and he's got one goal in his past 17 games.
• Tremendous idea by the arena's in-game entertainment folks to pump 'Renegade' midway through the third, just as the Penguins could've used the jolt, accompanied by highlights of some of the Steelers' bigger plays this NFL season.
I can't say it often enough: Same first name, same set of colors. Like no other city.
• Thanks for reading my hockey coverage. Taylor Haase will spend her Sunday in Boston, where the Bruins might still be busy counting up all 10 of their goals against Mike Sullivan's Rangers earlier this afternoon.
THE ASYLUM
Grind: Lousy call? Maybe, but a lousy effort, too
Sidney Crosby, seething and rightly so, stood at his stall to show me why.
Still wearing his skates several minutes after the Penguins had fallen short of the Flames, 2-1, tonight at PPG Paints Arena, he turned the toes of both boots slightly apart, then straightened them, to demonstrate how he'd made every effort to dodge Calgary's Devin Cooley and the goaltender interference call that'd cost his team the tying goal with 7:03 remaining in regulation.
Press play on this:
See how Sid's initially waiting on the puck with the toes apart?
OK, then see how Kevin Bahl bangs into him, so that Sid then makes contact with Cooley, so that Cooley then goes down as if he's been blasted by an elephant gun?
Uh-huh, that.
"It looks bad," Sid would acknowledge, "but, you know, being in the play, I felt like I did my best to try to avoid the goalie, and I got pushed into him. I mean, the explanation had something to do with being in the crease, but you're allowed in the crease as long as you don't impede the goalie. And I was trying to get through there and got pushed back into him."
Slight pause.
"He did a good job of selling it, you know?"
Meaning Cooley.
"I grazed him and he went down pretty easy. I mean, that's what you're gonna do. It's a hard one to challenge and it doesn't look great, but I know I was gonna get around him if I didn't get pushed."
So ... yeah. There went the six-game winning streak, and this against ne of the NHL's bona fide bottom-feeders. There'd be a couple other chances the rest of the way, but nothing Cooley, armed with a .918 save percentage, couldn't handle amid 27 total saves.
Why didn't Dan Muse challenge?
That doesn't look great, either, to borrow Sid's phrasing, particularly with a throbbing crowd of 18,322 -- one of the biggest and most boisterous of the season -- booing its collective lungs out for most of those final seven minutes.
Not going to lie: I wondered this myself. Still do. Goals weren't about to come easily, and I'm not sure the deterrent -- a team's hit with a minor penalty, of course, if a challenge fails -- outweighed the potential value of getting that goal in that moment.
"Every challenge that happens in the league, you look at them, and they're all a little bit different, but we're always evaluating," Muse would try to explain. "I felt like ... yes, we did consider it, but I didn't think that we had a chance. I felt like we'd be just going on the penalty kill, you know, which ... they're not easy decisions, but that's what I felt at the time, that this was an extremely low, chance of coming back worse based on what I've seen in the league."
He has a case. And, although management's not about to share, I'll bet, he's got data to support it. Kyle Dubas and his analytics team study all facets of the NHL game, including officiating, and I've been made directly aware -- including after this -- after other similar scenes this season that the way the goaltender interference rule's been called has been especially vexing for everyone involved. No one seems to know, as they'll attest, what exactly constitutes goaltender interference.
But this, I was told here, was the main reason for no challenge this time: If the attacking player enters the crease area on his own -- as Sid did -- that's got a near-zero chance of being overturned by replay officials in Toronto. And again, they had data.
Whatever. There's another one in less than 24 hours.
JOE SARGENT / GETTY
Rickard Rakell skates up ice in the first period Saturday.
• Besides, being blunt, that's not where this one was lost.
This was the opening shift of the third period. Watch nobody but Novak:
That's not OK. He was placed on the top line to replace Bryan Rust, who was scratched for a lower-body injury, and he needed to be the first forward tracking back. Well, he was, as can be seen above, but that's nowhere near enough exertion toward keeping Matt Coronato from cutting right between the hashes, then casually picking his spot on Arturs Silovs.
Winning goal right there. Can't happen.
Know what else can't happen?
How about the Flames emerging from the second intermission with visibly more energy?
Or, for that matter, the Flames emerging that way from the opening faceoff?
I brought this up with Muse:
"I think we got away from what was working in the second," he'd reply. "They had odd-man rushes, obviously, not just on the goals against but some of the follow-up shifts. We got away from it. And I think we weren’t able to find it until the little bit in the back half of the third period. We gotta play a more consistent game than we did there."
"I don’t think we came out like we have lately in the first period," Anthony Mantha would say. "Lately, we’ve been doing the opposite of that, and it’s been really good for our team."
Nowhere to hide from that.
• Nor the 15 giveaways, notably a team-high three from Novak.
• No giveaway could've been more gruesome than this from Ryan Shea:
Hard to fathom that one, huh?
Shea and Jack St. Ivany had some miserable metrics, in general, continuing to cast doubt on management's odd push to reinvent the third defense pairing even after they'd appeared to have a pretty good one in Connor Clifton and Ryan Graves. Maybe should've just taken yes for an answer.
• What a pass by Evgeni Malkin, what a finish by Egor Chinakhov ...
... and what an amazing roughing minor on Geno, for wanting nothing more in the moment than to robustly celebrate with Chinakhov. Not sure I'd ever seen that.
• Credit where due: Calgary played hard from front to finish -- "This was a big game for us," Coronato would say afterward -- and extended one of the strangest streaks in the sport by being 9-0-2 in their past 11 games against the Metro. The Flames don't score much, and they didn't here, either, but it's not like they're New Jersey-ing their way through the schedule.
• Everyone loves Ben Kindel. Impossible not to. But I'd be remiss if not pointing out that it's been 12 games since he's scored, and he's got one goal in his past 17 games.
• Tremendous idea by the arena's in-game entertainment folks to pump 'Renegade' midway through the third, just as the Penguins could've used the jolt, accompanied by highlights of some of the Steelers' bigger plays this NFL season.
I can't say it often enough: Same first name, same set of colors. Like no other city.
• Thanks for reading my hockey coverage. Taylor Haase will spend her Sunday in Boston, where the Bruins might still be busy counting up all 10 of their goals against Mike Sullivan's Rangers earlier this afternoon.
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