BUFFALO — David Rittich may get a call on Sunday asking for a charitable donation of sorts. If so, it will be from the NHL, and he will not get to say no.
“Seventy-five cameras at the stadium,” Rittich said of Tage Thompson’s goal in the second period of the Islanders’ 3-2 shootout loss to Buffalo on Saturday, “and not even one showed the puck in the net. The only guy who saw it was the ref.
“So I don’t even react when they start celebrating, but when you don’t see the replay, a clear replay, with the puck in, how can it be a good goal?”
Thompson cut down the left wing and faked a shot before appearing to tuck it in behind Rittich’s pad at 8:55 of the second, putting the Sabres up 2-0 in what ended up being a crucial point of the game. With the puck underneath Rittich and not clearly in the net, Peyton Krebs arrived to try and poke it in, but it was called a goal for Thompson.
That baffled both Rittich and Islanders coach Patrick Roy after the game, both of whom said there was no camera angle showing that the puck went in.
Because it was called a good goal on the ice, though, the burden of proof was on the Islanders — and they could not challenge without having a clear shot of the puck not crossing the goal line.
“I see nothing,” Roy said. “I never saw the puck in the net. So it was hard. The reason why we didn’t challenge it is very simple: It’s because the referee said that the puck went in right at the start. Us, we thought the puck went in when [Krebs] poked it into our goalie’s pad. But they gave the goal to Thompson, so there was no way we could win that challenge.
“It was inconclusive in my opinion, so we would not have won the challenge. But if they would’ve given the goal to [Krebs] when he hit the pads, then we would’ve challenged it. And I don’t know how the referee saw it at the beginning. That’s the other thing I’m not sure [about].”
Maxim Tsyplakov and Marshall Warren both came into the lineup, with Max Shabanov and Adam Boqvist coming out as healthy scratches.
Roy said that healthy scratching Shabanov for the first time this season had nothing to do with his performance but that he merely wanted to get Tsyplakov in.
