Colorado @ Columbus - Game Thought

That's right, I only have one thought on the win against Columbus. And it nearly caused my head to asplode.

With about 15 seconds left in a 3-2 hockey game, Columbus appeared to tie the game with a Jason Chimera wraparound. However after one glance at the replay, it was clear that the puck did not go between the posts. Instead, it went in under the side of the net after it got jostled by Scott Hannan.

Or at least, I thought it only took one glance. The Columbus announcers however spent the entire review period calling it a good call. Their rationale, which they stated with exuberance nearly a dozen times? To paraphrase: "That was a goal. The net was dislodged, not displaced. And there's a difference. The net can be dislodged, and it's still a goal. Displaced? No goal. But clearly, the net was only dislodged."

When the ruling came back that it was no goal because the puck didn't go between the pipes there was five seconds of silence followed by this exchange:
Announcer 1: That's their rule.
Announcer 2: Why?!
Announcer 1: Because it did not go between the two posts is what they're saying.

Those tricky, century old rules are a bitch, eh? They then talked about it some more and even tossed in that there should have been a minor penalty what with the way the net was dislodged. They clearly decided to throw out the dislodged vs displaced logic there but logic is only useful when it's convenient, right?

I feel like I rag on announcers more than I give them credit, but this was flat out awful. They should feel embarrassed at not having understood what it takes to score a goal. You know, the most important part of the game they're calling...

Calgary Flames Announcers Hit New Low

I've never been a big fan of Roger Millions and Charlie Simmer as announcers. Not because I'm an Avalanche fan but because I find them to be terribly biased and annoying.

However all announcers are biased towards their home teams to a degree and most are annoying as well so I try to just shrug them off.

Tonight though, I felt more like flipping them off. The Flames were hosting the Islanders and tied at 4 with a few minutes left, I decided to tune in. What I ended up seeing was ridiculous.

Midway through a 4-minute powerplay, the Flames called a timeout and the folks in the booth decided to show the Bumper to Bumper "Bump of the Night". Now of course I'm expecting to see a hit from Phaneuf so everybody can swoon over big bad Dion.

Not this time. It turns out that the bump of the night had Cory Sarich boarding Mike Comrie head first into the boards. Comrie was slow to get up and it was obvious that it should have been a penalty.



Now, to their credit the announcers weren't too amped up about the hit and one of them even grudgingly admitted that "They might have had a penalty call on that". Of course, he finished that sentence with "But there wasn't" just to drive home that no penalty = no foul.

Then, as I was waiting for my lame video capture to be uploaded to YouTube for the world to see, I watched the rest of the game including the post-game show. And do you know who they called arrogant? Rick DiPietro.

I couldn't believe my ears. Now I haven't seen every single interview Rick's ever given but in any interview I've seen he's about as down to earth and humble as it gets. Every post-game he's thanking the fans for making it such a great game and just seems like an all around decent guy.

Considering he's a handsome multi-millionaire living in New York City, I think he could be a lot worse.