Boston Bruins’ goaltender Tim Thomas protests overtime goal by Washington Capitals-NHL News
Boston Bruins’ goaltender, Tim Thomas, has protested the validity of the goal by Washington Capitals’ forward, Joel Ward, into the third minute of overtime in their last game, which resulted in elimination of Bruins from the Eastern Conference playoff quarterfinals
series and helped Capitals through to the semi-finals.
Thomas, who was unsuccessful in getting the officials on the ice to hear his plea, has opted to lodge the protest on Facebook, but without much avail, as the goal was declared legitimate and the team was ousted.
Yet the player has cited the relevant rules of the NHL book that prompts for declaring a goal illegal/invalid if it is scored by forcibly impeding movement of a goaltender by the attacking player.
He wrote:
“Obviously you see Knuble coming down with the puck and coming to the net hard. He had himself in a position- he’s a big, strong guy - where it looked like to me he could cut across the net or he could go both ways, so I had to play him straight-up.
The player added:
“When he got in closer to me it got stuck on his backhand there, so I was just trying to play him honest and wait for him to take the shot. I didn’t want to go down until after he released the puck because I didn’t want him to be able to go up and over my
pads.”
Apparently, he wanted the on-ice officials to know the problem before allowing the goal but he was unable to convince anyone to hear him, let alone approve him.
However, he is not alone as a section of media has specifically quoted the paragraph from the relevant rule from the NHL policy, clearly clarifying the situation that a goal has to be disallowed if it is scored by affecting the movement of the netminder
in his crease.
But the commentator has admitted that just like “good book” all rules of the NHL book are not followed, as matter of fact.
At the end, it remains to be very surprising for the goaltender as much as for some of outside game followers that none of the on-ice official noted Capitals’ player, Knuble, playing too hard on the netminder.
The issue seems to have well settled now except for Joe Ward, who had scored the goal on a rebound on a shot from Mike Knuble, the player has been subjected to racial abuse on his Twitter account.
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