CALGARY — Martin Gelinas sits in the press box of the Scotiabank Saddledome, looking down and staring at the open net below. When asked where it happened, he points right at the goal mouth.
It was Game 6 of the 2004 Stanley Cup Final and Gelinas had yet another chance to be the hero for the Calgary Flames. That spring, Gelinas earned the nickname “The Eliminator” after scoring series-winning goals against Vancouver, Detroit and San Jose. The Flames, the No. 6 seed in the Western Conference, were underdogs in each matchup.
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With about seven minutes remaining in a 2-2 game, Gelinas and Oleg Saprykin charged toward the Tampa Bay Lightning net with less than 20 seconds left on a power play.
Saprykin drove the net with Lightning forward Tim Taylor draped over his back. Lightning defenseman Pavel Kubina slid his stick to block any chance of a shot. But Saprykin slipped the puck off goalie Nikolai Khabibulin’s blocker. The puck was pushed forward just as Gelinas halted his stride, letting it go off his right skate toward the goal line. The puck hit Khabibulin’s right pad before trickling away from the crease.
Teammate and future Flames GM Craig Conroy was on the bench. He says he saw the puck hitting Gelinas’ skate. He could tell at least someone on the ice thought it had gone in.
“You saw Saprykin kind of pointing, like, ‘It’s in,'” Conroy said. “That end of the crowd thought it was in because they jumped. But it was only at that one end. I could not tell from the bench. It happened so quick.”
Saprykin crashed into Khabibulin before landing into the blue paint. Gelinas hovered atop the Lightning goaltender in search of the puck. But Lightning captain Dave Andreychuk retrieved it, tapping it to Taylor, who launched it out of his zone.
It was as close as the Flames got to winning that game — and the Stanley Cup itself.
Things have changed in the NHL since the 2004 final. The situation room has been designed to review every potential goal call. It has access to 17 different camera angles, and then dozens of staffers who are staring at TV screens and communicating directly with on-ice officials. Coach’s challenges were implemented for the 2015-16 season. The NHL introduced crossbar cameras during the 2016 postseason and had as many as seven net cameras during the 2019 playoffs. There are more ways for the NHL to review potential goals, even if they still haven’t all gone the Flames way.
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“It was actually after that (2004) series, I think (Flames owner) Murray Edwards suggested we put more cameras in the nets,” former NHL senior vice-president of operations Mike Murphy said.
Ultimately, though, there was little on-ice deliberation. The game continued and the score remained tied at the end of regulation. Tampa Bay Lightning forward Martin St. Louis eventually won the game in double overtime, forcing a Game 7 in Tampa Bay that the Lightning won to clinch the Stanley Cup.
“I wish I would’ve done it differently,” Gelinas said. “My personality is like, I’m just waiting for something to happen. Nothing happened.
“If I had to do it all over again, I would’ve put my arms up … just to kind of say ‘Hey, it was in.’”
There’s a bar in Calgary called Side Street located in the city’s northwest quadrant. The bar has banners for each NHL team and they list every time they’ve won the Stanley Cup. A Flames banner hangs prominently in a corner of the bar away from the others. Below the flaming C, you’ll find 1988-89, the year they won the Cup over the Canadiens, and 2003-04, the year Flames fans felt cheated.
The loss takes on extra significance in a Canadian market, where no team has won the Stanley Cup since 1993.
Twenty years have passed since Gelinas’ almost goal and in Calgary there’s no debate about whether or not the puck was in. If you hang around the Saddledome long enough, you might see a fan with a custom-made Flames jersey with “It Was In” draped over the nameplate and 04 as the number. And when franchise icons Jarome Iginla and Miikka Kiprusoff, two key players from the 2004 run, had their jersey number retirement ceremonies, fans chanted “It Was In.”
The players agree.
“I should say it was in,” Kiprusoff said in March before his jersey retirement ceremony. “Because it was in.”
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“It was a goal,” Iginla told The Athletic. “I think that you can see that it was a goal. But unfortunately, that’s part of the sport.”
For all the certainty in Calgary, the view from the outside is a little more complicated.
We might have had a clearer answer if the NHL had been more advanced in instant replay at the time. The concept was introduced 13 years earlier with mixed results. Referees worked with video judges, but the process was rough.
“We didn’t have any camera angles. We were just put on hold,” former NHL referee and ESPN referee analyst Dave Jackson said. “And they said we’ll get back to you. You used to be standing there having no idea what they’re looking at.”
It took a complaint to the league in the early 2000s from then-Detroit Red Wings GM Ken Holland to instigate change. In 2003, the NHL decided that reviews would be handled by Toronto-based video judges, leading to the situation room we know today.
The NHL had two video rooms in the Saddledome press box with a handful of staffers and league execs watching the 2004 game. While they had overhead cameras that TV broadcasters didn’t have, the league relied on the same feeds shown to the millions of Stanley Cup Final viewers.
The game continued for over 20 seconds after Gelinas’ chance on net, before an offside call halted action. Coaches and players couldn’t convince the referees to review the play and the ensuing stoppage didn’t last long, so broadcasters had little time to show the replay.
“If we’d gone slower and let television know what we’re doing and that we’re looking at this and review all the angles. I’m positive it wouldn’t have changed anything. But it would’ve alerted everybody that (we’re) reviewing this,” Murphy said.
“We should’ve taken a minute and a half or two minutes. … We took probably about 40 seconds, and both booths said it was no goal.”
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If there was a long delay, “Hockey Night in Canada” executive producer Joel Darling would’ve had his crew “empty the tank” showing every possible replay angle they had of the play. As Darling remembers, the CBC did not immediately feature one angle that showed the puck possibly crossing the red line after hitting Gelinas’ skate. The CBC eventually zoomed in on the puck on a replay later in the game, but broadcasters Bob Cole and Harry Neale were still unsure.
“When you have 15 or 20 different angles, you’re always trying to feel the best angle the quickest as you can,” Darling said. “And in that case, that just didn’t show it. But having said that, that wouldn’t have changed the story anyways.”
Whlie Jackson watched the game from home on CBC, he didn’t realize the play was up for debate.
“I was watching the game pretty closely,” Jackson said. “And I don’t think I had that many beers.”
Meanwhile, the American broadcast showed the angle that seemed to show the puck (possibly) crossing the line. It shocked broadcasters Gary Thorne, Bill Clement and John Davidson.
“Oh, my gracious!”
“That puck is in!”
“We certainly thought when we looked at it, that it had crossed the line,” said Thorne, a longtime play-by-play broadcaster. “As Bill (Clement) and I said during the broadcast and we had a chance to look at the replay. I mean, the play itself was so fast, nobody even thought about it. I don’t think there was even a thought when the play continued that the puck might have gone in.”
Davidson remembers getting up from his seat and meeting with Murphy to confirm what he had seen.
“I said, ‘What do you think, Murph?’” Davidson said. “He said, ‘Didn’t go in all the way.’
“I could sleep at night that night, I can tell you that,” Murphy said. “There’s nights when I’ve gone and I haven’t felt great about a play. That night, not at all. I felt we made the right call. There was no other decision we could make.”
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Even if there was no kicking motion from Gelinas, Murphy said none of the angles available showed the puck crossing the goal line. The crossbar and Khabibulin’s pad kept them from seeing where the puck was along the goal line.
Neither Stephen Walkom nor Bill McCreary, the two referees from Game 6, were made available by the NHL for comment.
During their Game 7 broadcast, ABC recreated the visual of the puck along the goal line thanks to several production technicians.
ABC’s visual recreation of Gelinas’ no-goal (YouTube)
“If you’re looking at the goal net from the blue line, and you see the puck on edge, but at a 45-degree angle, you see white ice past the goal line,” Davidson said.
“At the same time, if you look straight down, even though it looked like it was over because you saw white ice, if you look straight down from above, the whole puck is not over the goal line. Because the top of it is still on the goal line.”
Of course, not everyone agrees.
“I think in today’s NHL, it would have been a goal,” Darling said. “Video replay has always been adjusted over the years to get the right decision made or to have the right play. And if that happened today, you would have heard a horn. Or at least during that first stoppage, they would have taken the time to look at that.”
Gelinas’ family was in attendance for Game 6 in Calgary. If the goal had counted and the Flames had held on to win, the plan was for Gelinas to celebrate his fourth series-winning goal with his loved ones and teammates well into the night as the entire city exploded along the Red Mile, a raucous stretch along Calgary’s downtown 17th Avenue SW.
There would have been no better circumstance for Gelinas to mark his 34th birthday.
“Everything was in line for it to happen and, unfortunately, it didn’t happen,” Gelinas said.
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Yet despite not winning the Stanley Cup, so many memories from that playoff run endure in Calgary. Gelinas’ heroics. “The Shift” from Iginla. Kiprusoff’s goaltending performances. Enforcer Chris Simon scoring five goals in the postseason. Even longtime broadcaster Pete Maher’s “Yeah, baby!” radio calls over the team’s biggest moments.
Conroy remembers the early days of his Calgary tenure and not seeing many young fans wearing Flames jerseys when he dropped his three children off at school. As the Flames went deeper into the 2004 playoffs, the jerseys multiplied.
“We hadn’t been in the playoffs for seven years. We hadn’t got them excited about anything,” Conroy said. “So, that’s the goal for us now is to get back to that. There’s nothing like a Stanley Cup playoff run to just build the excitement, the city and everything around your team. When people still talk about the ’04 run, those are great memories for me.”
But not everyone wants to relive them.
“Still hurts a little bit,” Kiprusoff said. “I haven’t watched those games since. Never watched any of those final games.”
Twenty years later, Conroy is the Flames’ GM and Iginla is a special adviser in the front office. Gelinas works with Flames AHL prospects in player development. Gelinas has a Cup ring from 1990 with the Edmonton Oilers, the last in a run of seven straight championships won by a Canadian team, but the close call with Calgary still stings.
“It’s part of the journey,” Gelinas said. “We had such a magical run coming that close, a goal that could’ve been in was not. It is a little disappointing. But that’s life, right?”
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic. Photos: Jeff Vinnick / Getty; Julian McKenzie / The Athletic.)
