RALEIGH, N.C. — Make no mistake. The Rangers did not play nearly well enough to deserve a better fate than the 4-3 defeat inflicted upon them Thursday night by a 26th-overall Hurricanes team well on its way to an eighth straight playoff miss.
But let’s be equally clear. Every flaw in the NHL’s arbitrary and subjective goaltender interference rule and coach’s challenge was on display when the referee tandem of Francois St. Laurent and Gord Dwyer allowed Sebastian Aho’s tying 3-3 power-play goal at 9:04 of the third period to stand even though Elias Lindholm had elbowed Antti Raanta in the mask while the goaltender was in the crease moments before the puck flew past the blinded netminder.
Defying logic and the laws of physics, but apparently not the NHL rulebook, St. Laurent told a decidedly unamused coach Alain Vigneault that the “contact was involuntary” because while Raanta’s skates were in the crease, his head was not.
“Of all the times I’ve asked for a coach’s challenge, this one I’m sure I’m 100 percent right,” Vigneault said after the match in which his team was outplayed decisively over the final 20 minutes after carrying a 3-2 lead into the third on the strength of three power-play goals. “When they made the call initially, the referee who hadn’t made the call [Dwyer] came to us and said it’s a good goal because Antti was not in the blue.
“I’m looking at it and Antti’s two feet are in the blue paint and there’s contact [by Lindholm] that lifts his mask and obviously he can’t see the shot. Then I was told [by St. Laurent] that his feet were in the blue, but his head was outside the blue. In my opinion it was the wrong call.”
It was a ridiculous call, just as ridiculous as the mechanism of the challenge on which the referee, who emphatically made the original call, in this instance signaling multiple times that it was good despite an instantaneous complaint from Raanta, would immediately thereafter review his own decision and be expected to reverse it.
Raanta, who rarely complains, was incensed. The netminder, who yielded the winner on a right-porch slam dunk to Aho on another power play at 12:28, skated to the blue line with his arms outstretched during the review, only to be waved away by Dwyer.
The Finn was perplexed after it had ended.
“I don’t know. I didn’t really understand the explanation,” he said after facing 18 third-period shots following an opening two periods in which Carolina recorded a sum of 12. “My mask was on my nose. At first I thought maybe it was our defenseman [Ryan McDonagh in front] who hit my mask and that’s why they allowed it. Then I saw the replay.
“I don’t know the rule if I can’t be at the top [of the crease], do I have to be on the goal line? I was a little emotional there. I was asking what the rule is. What should I do?”
Again, though the goal clearly should have been disallowed under any rational interpretation of the rule, the Rangers were clearly co-conspirators in their own demise in allowing Carolina to completely take over the game at the drop of the first puck of the third period.
“It’s a mindset. We were back on our heels even though we talk about how we have to be on our toes with the lead,” said Derek Stepan, who endured his 23rd straight game without a goal despite firing 10 shots on net plus another try that dinged the post with 3:30 remaining in the match. “We have to play aggressive, even with a one-goal lead. But we sat back.”
They sat back after getting a five-on-three power-play goal from Chris Kreider in the first period and a pair of five-on-four scores from Mika Zibanejad in the second. The Blueshirts, 0-for-26 in their previous 10 contests, thus recorded as many goals with the man-advantage in this one on six opportunities as they had over their previous 22 games in 59 opportunities dating back to Jan. 19.
But then came the third-period follies perpetrated by the team wearing white and the tandem wearing stripes. And when asked again about his understanding of the rule and the call, Vigneault said:
“You ask the league, but they’re going to spin it any way to look all right. That’s the way it always is.”