No Refereeing Is Bad Refereeing

When the New York Islanders take the ice on Wednesday night for the first game of their second-round playoff series against the Tampa Bay Lightning, they can be grateful to their captain, John Tavares, who scored both goals in their series-clinching, double-overtime comeback win against the Florida Panthers on Sunday. But the Islanders have someone else to thank, too: the officials at that Panther game. Tavares’s performance that night was exceptional—he tied the game, with fifty-four seconds to go in the third period, and then scored a beautiful wraparound goal in overtime—but he was only in position to become a hero because of what Sporting News termed “the worst non-call of the playoffs.” Just before he scored the game-tying goal, the Panthers had the puck in the Islanders’ defensive zone with the net empty (the Islanders had pulled their goalie in favor of an extra forward). As Florida’s Vincent Trocheck went to shoot, the Islanders’ Matt Martin, diving to knock the puck away, tripped Trocheck, who fell to the ice. Trocheck lost the puck, and the Islanders eventually retrieved it, leading to a rush that culminated in Tavares’s goal.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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