Yankee Hotel Failtrot

by Ryan

I’m having a hard time finding a video of the no goal call from the first period of Wednesday’s game. Jochen Hecht’s shot on Brian Elliot bounces off the goaltender and goes perilessly close to the goal line, but the call on the ice stood as “no goal” following a lengthy video review.

If you listen very carefully, however, Rob Ray says something interesting when they were talking about an overhead view of the play. RJ suggested that they have one, and Ray agreed:

“We should have one of those in every arena… working,” he said.

Wondering what that’s all about? Via Mike Harrington of TBN:

The Sabres thought they had opened the scoring in the first period when Jochen Hecht’s shot trickled down Elliott’s back into the net before getting fished out by Chris Phillips. Officials on the ice ruled it no goal and replays were inconclusive.

There was no overhead camera shot and Sabres officials said that’s because the HD camera above the goal line has been inoperative for several months.

The team said the camera is NHL property and has not been repaired as the Sabres have requested. An analog camera that does not feed into the television broadcast was reviewed.

Now we’re not calling for conspiracy theories here, but shouldn’t that be the type of thing that gets taken care of on a routine basis? I mean, if you want to look for reasons the NHL is a distant fourth in the “Big Four” sports, a simple case of custodial worl should be pretty high on the list.

We hockey fans complain about a lot, from the Wheel O’ Discipline Colin Campbell seems to use when giving suspensions to the crappy HD feed we are stuck with thanks to MSG’s third best cameras. Still, for as much as we hate watching hockey in standard definition in this era of technology, shouldn’t people determining on-ice results have the absolute latest technology available to them?

I mean, the entire situation is absurd. Forget about what team benefited from the lack of an HD camera. In another half hour the shoe would be on the other foot, and no one wants things decided on grainy video feeds.

It might be a bit of belated overreaction, but how bushleague does the NHL look when a broken camera prevents a completely thorough decision from being made? Was it a goal? Probably not, no, but we won’t ever find out, will we?