The Edmonton Oilers are one of the hottest teams in the NHL right now.
They had a horrific start to the season, but after a coaching change, they’ve started to look like a contender again, and since November 23rd, they’ve won 16 of the 19 games.
The Oilers won 2-1 over the Chicago Blackhawks on Tuesday night, but it wasn’t without controversy.
The Oilers held a 2-1 lead early in the third period, when Leon Draisaitl took the puck over the blueline with his skates, before finding Connor McDavid across the ice. McDavid gave Hyman an easy tap-in to make it 3-1, but the Blackhawks coaching staff decided to challenge the goal for offside.
The review was lengthy, which had Connor McDavid furious.
Postgame, he sounded off on the review process of the goal, which ultimately was overturned.
“If it takes you 15 minutes to determine if it’s offside or not, it probably doesn’t matter,” said McDavid after the game. “I talked to the linesman after; ultimately, it’s not their call, I guess. Obviously, they said it came down from the league.
“You zoom in, you zoom in, you keep zooming in until you can’t zoom in anymore, I guess it’s offside. These are calls that change games, and ultimately, it didn’t go our way. That was a big call; it would’ve really hurt them.”
Connor McDavid is perhaps biased, but there was no doubt about what he thought should’ve been the right call.
“I thought it should’ve been onside. It’s kind of possession too, right? The argument of possession, that whole debate can start again. It was such a close one. You’d like to see it. I think the NHL uses the analogy ‘dead wrong’… They want it to be clear and obvious, right? That one’s certainly not clean and obvious.”
The Oilers managed to get the win anyway, but head coach Kris Knoblauch was also upset about the review process.
”We get about 30 seconds to decide if it’s a good goal or not. I’m not sure how long they get to decide,” said Knoblauch. “We’re at a little bit of a disadvantage.
“I’m not going to argue with the outcome of either one of those. It was a tough one, but I’m sure they felt they got the right call.”
