Elliotte Friedman of CBC spoke with Senior Vice-President of Hockey Operations Mike Murphy today regarding the missed goal in San Jose last night.
The league views this under the prism of Rule 78.5 -- the world-famous "Intent to Blow." If the referee intends to blow his whistle to stop the play, that supersedes everything.
Here is what Murphy said:
"We have in a week two, three or four plays when the puck goes in the net as the whistle goes. What we look for is how strong a referee's signal is, how committed he is to his call.
"We don't want to undermine the referee... have people watching saying, 'See, see, see, they don't agree,' so before we put him on the headset we're looking to see how strong he is on his call."
The one thing that drives the NHL crazy about these things is people judging it in slow motion. You'd be better off sword-fighting a swarm of gnats, because technology makes that too simple, but Murphy and his co-workers do try to work through this stuff at real speed.
Watch it here if you missed it...
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