Last season, the Philadelphia Flyers lost a goal when a Fox Sports producer didn’t provide camera angles during a goal replay that would have made the evidence indisputable. (That producer ended up getting suspended for the rest of the season but reportedly returned for the 2010-11 season.)
Ultimately, that ended up being a quickly forgotten, quirky little story. The Flyers barely made the playoffs that season, but they dominated that game so it was easy to forgive that odd discretion.
The Flyers found themselves in another controversial situation this weekend as referees called off a would-be overtime game winning goal against the Calgary Flames. Officials ruled that Chris Pronger violated what is often called “The Avery Rule,” a variation on the league’s unsportsmanlike conduct penalty enacted to ensure that players won’t impede a goalie’s vision in the way Sean Avery did to Martin Brodeur.
Now, there are two things that cannot be questioned: Pronger did wave his hand in front of Miikka Kiprusoff’s face and the action was nowhere near as egregious as Avery’s.
Although it won’t change anything in the standings (the Flames ended up winning in a shootout), we thought it would be wise to ask PHT readers if referees made the right choice.
(click to enlarge)
So two-thirds of our readers think that the referees were wrong for disallowing the Flyers goal while the other third thought they made the right call. If you’d like one last look at it, here is the video one more time.
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