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Flyers’ MacDonald frustrated by overturned goal

The Philadelphia Flyers have been struggling of late, so scoring an early goal against Columbus was huge.

Unfortunately for them, Andrew MacDonald’s goal didn’t count.

MacDonald appeared to give his team a 1-0 lead less than two minutes into the game, but Blue Jackets head coach John Tortorella challenged the play because he felt his goalie, Sergei Bobrovsky, was impeded from making the save.

As you can tell from the video at the top of the page, Michael Raffl never touched Bobrovsky, but Jackets defenseman Ryan Murray did because the Flyers forward nudged him into his own goalie.

After review, the call on the ice was overturned and the score remained 0-0.

Here’s what the NHL’s Situation Room blog had to say about the play:

The Referee determined that Raffl’s actions in bumping the Columbus defender into the goaltender prevented Bobrovsky from doing his job in his crease. The decision was made in accordance with Rule 78.7 which states in part: “The standard for overturning the call in the event of a ‘GOAL’ call on the ice is that the Referee ... determines that the goal should have been disallowed due to ‘Interference on the Goalkeeper,’ as described in Rules 69.1, 69.3 and 69.4.”

It’s safe to say MacDonald and his teammates weren’t fans of the decision.

“If that’s the case [interference], then the D’s should start falling on the goalies,” said MacDonald, per CSN Philly. “Just fall on him and they will call it for what it is.

“It was a guy trying to get to the front of the net and battle for space. It was what it was and we felt their goal was pretty similar. There wasn’t a ton of contact there. We felt we got the short end of the stick.”

Speaking of that Columbus goal by David Savard, here it is:

The Flyers felt like Josh Anderson got a piece of Mason before the Savard shot went in. The referees clearly didn’t feel the same way.

Brayden Schenn eventually tied the game late to force OT, but Nick Foligno gave the Blue Jackets the 2-1 win in the extra frame.