There are two requisites for a goal to occur during a hockey game.
The puck must fully cross the opposing goal line (unlike football, in which the ball only has to touch an imaginary plane extending infinitely upward from the front end of the white stripe for a touchdown to occur).
Or, as Section 78.4 of the National Hockey League rule book, “Scoring a Goal,” puts it so eloquently:
A goal shall be scored when the puck shall have been put between the goal posts by the stick of a player of the attacking side, from in front and below the crossbar, and entirely across a red line the width of the diameter of the goal posts drawn on the ice from one goal post to the other with the goal frame in its proper position.
Requirement No. 2: Someone has to see that happen.
Given the rather rigid nature of the average hockey puck, there’s more than a high probability that Daniel Briere’s stick nudged the disk over the goal line with 17 seconds left in Tuesday night’s Game 4 of the Eastern Conference semifinals against the New York Rangers.
You know it. I know it. Briere knows it. Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist knows it. The 18,200 fans at Madison Square Garden and however many people watched the game on the Versus Network know it.
But it doesn’t count, because nobody saw it.
No official caught the brief penetration of New York’s goal, and the video replay didn’t show a definitive shot of the circular hunk of frozen rubber getting all the way across the aforementioned goal line before Lundqvist swept it back out with his leg pad.
As agonizing as that reality might be to Buffalo fans who watched their team ho-hum it through about 50 minutes of game time while falling behind 2-0, it was not, therefore, a goal.
And the Sabres are not in a position to close out the series with a win Friday night at HSBC Arena. Instead, after New York's 2-1 win, Buffalo's best-of-seven with the Rangers has been reduced to a best-of-three. “One Team, One Goal” is two defeats away from becoming “One Team on the Golf Course.”
Not because of the non-call, but due to the uncharacteristic performance that preceded it.
Uncharacteristic as compared to the regular season, that is. Nine games into the postseason, Buffalo has yet to put forth a 60-minute display of the form that piled up more points than any other team during the regular season.
The Sabres have shown flashes, as they did in the closing moments of Game 4. Maybe the perceived injustice suffered on Tuesday will trigger the woe-is-us element engrained into every Buffalo sports team from here on.
Then again, Lindy Ruff doesn’t seem to want his team playing like it has since last fall. He talked on Monday about playing ugly and backed up his words by benching the Sabre with perhaps the prettiest game, Maxim Afinogenov.
The logic of addressing the lack of scoring opportunities through three games by deactivating one of the players who is best at creating his own escapes me. It didn’t seem to do much for Buffalo in Game 4, either.
One of the most workable sporting clichés is that you dance with who brought you. On Tuesday, Ruff decided to keep Afinogenov’s pirouettes on the sidelines.
If the Sabres don’t come around pretty quick, that will be their vantage point for the rest of the playoffs.