It’s not every day that an iPhone figures prominently in the result of a hockey game, but leave it to the NHL to break new technological ground in infuriating fashion.
The Blackhawks and Wild delivered on the expectation of playing postseason-like hockey Wednesday. But the NHL didn’t have a playoff-caliber night from an officiating standpoint in the Hawks’ 4-3 overtime victory.
Officials needed more than six minutes to determine that a Zach Parise goal would stand after the league deemed replay evidence inconclusive to support the Hawks’ challenge that Parise was offside before the score.
“We think it was offside but I guess it might not have been conclusive from their vantage point,” Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville said. “That’s it."
Things got weird after Parise tied the score 2-2 at 7:15 in the second period when he put his own rebound past Corey Crawford. Quenneville challenged the play, saying Parise didn’t get back onside after the puck had re-entered the zone off Charlie Coyle’s stick.
Officials took an agonizingly long time looking over replays, which appeared to show the puck hitting Coyle’s stick before Parise had tagged up. But officials wanted to be sure, so sure that at one point linesman Ryan Daisy grabbed an iPhone from a penalty box attendant presumably to speak with league officials.
Meanwhile, the Wild scoreboard amused the crowd by poking fun at the officials and at one point depicted the officials in a split screen on the phone with the characters from the animated film “Minions.”
“I’m not sure what they were looking at,” Jonathan Toews said. “It is what it is. I think you’re always mad at the rule when it goes against you, and you love it when it’s in your favor. But it does slow down the game, especially when you have a (television) timeout right after that. It feels like we’ve been standing around for 15 minutes. I guess it happens.”
Eventually the review ended with the goal intact. The league said in a statement that no camera angle could determine definitively Parise was offside. The league did not provide an explanation for the delay.
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