HAMILTON -- AHL policy that doesn't allow officials to look at video replays got in the way of getting it right in Sunday night's Game 2 of the North Division final at MTS Centre.
Referee Frederic L'Ecuyer had a difficult decision to make when Lee Goren's shot hit the crossbar and was bouncing down near the goalline at 1:30 of the third period of a tied game. He hadn't seen the puck. Neither had his two linesman.
The goal judge, however, said he had seen the puck in the net and after a lengthy debate over whether to believe it, L'Ecuyer awarded the Moose a goal that video evidence clearly showed they did not score.
The Hamilton Bulldogs, however, shrugged off the error and rallied to win the game anyway, taking a 2-0 lead into tonight's Game 3 of the best-of-seven affair.
"If you can't have it in every rink, it's not fair to everybody else," Bulldogs head coach Don Lever said Monday at Copps Coliseum, site of tonight's contest. "And it's a tough situation with the one-referee system, so the league's really in... well, it's just financially it's not making sense."
Lever, however, couldn't argue with the premise that if you can get it right, why not use all the tools available.
"Maybe they could do that in the playoffs, in that situation," he agreed. "Maybe that's the way to look at it. You'd hate to have it come down to a seventh game and a situation like that and have a decision like that made. That would be pretty embarrassing for the league.
"His (L'Ecuyer's) whole thing was, does he believe the goal judge. Did the goal judge really see it? He said, 'He told me three times and all three times the answer was similar,' so that's pretty well what he judged it on."
Moose coach Scott Arniel rose above the fray Monday but also seemed stuck on the fact that if Springfield, Binghamton and Portland don't use video-camera replays or overhead cameras like they do at MTS Centre, then nobody should.
"I'd be in favour of it," Arniel said about making video available to referees. "Last night, it had nothing to do with us. With video replay, if you can do it, if it's in all the buildings, as long as it goes quickly and as long as they don't have to phone Toronto, phone Springfield, that's the worst part of video replay.
"If it's simple, if it's a goal it's a goal, that's all you ask for. You'd always want the right call made."
In the aftermath of the wrong call, Lever was more upset Monday that the replay was not shown on the MTS Centre big screen, even though the on-ice officials wouldn't be able to use that evidence to decide.
"My point (Sunday) night was when they showed (an) off-side (call) three times, why didn't they show a replay of what happened on the (goal)?" he said. "Someone knew what they were doing."
But even Lever seemed impressed Monday that his team played its best hockey of the night after the foul call that put them behind.
"Our bench was pretty calm about it," he said. "It finally woke us up into getting some kind of offence, some kind of forechecking going because we hadn't done that at any time in the series. It was probably our best seven or eight minutes in a row until they got that power play in the third. We had taken over the flow of the game.
"It made us open up. We were down a goal and we opened up and were fortunate to get a couple. It's been a grind and it's going to be a grind."
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