The Islanders' coaching staff took a long, hard look at the Penguins' third goal on the tablets on the bench.
It was midway through the second period in Thursday's game between the two teams at PPG Paints Arena, and Josh Archibald had just scored off of a deflection of a Brian Dumoulin shot to give the Penguins a 3-1 lead.
It was as suspect as a goal could probably get, with there being three possible things on that sequence that the Islanders might have wanted to take another look at. They ultimately didn't challenge the play, a gamble that paid off in the Islanders' 4-3 comeback overtime victory over the Penguins.
What happened on the play, and what did Islanders coach Lane Lambert and Archibald both have to say about it? Let's break it down.
Archibald beat out Brock Nelson for a puck along the boards, passing it to Nick Bonino before making a beeline to the slot, where he was ready to deflect Dumoulin's shot from the blue line:
"We had a good shift, some good O-zone time," Archibald told me of the sequence. "I think one of the things we were trying to do tonight was to get to the front of the net. I was lucky to be in the right spot at the right time and the puck went off me and into the net."
Lambert told reporters after the game that the coaching staff was mainly concerned with how the puck got deflected off Archibald.
"There was potential that a glove got involved in the play, and we were just making sure that they got the call right," Lambert said.
I asked Archibald, and he said the puck hit him in the arm -- not the glove. Even if it did hit him in the glove, it doesn't matter. That's not the rule. The rule here is similar to the "no kicking motion" rule -- you can extend any part of the body and angle it to deflect a puck, but you can't "deliberately direct, bat or throw" the puck, and that is something that is allowed to be reviewed on video through a coach's challenge.
"I wasn't trying to tip it with my arm," Archibald said. "I was just trying to get free and it happened to hit me at the same time."
At the time, it also seemed like the Islanders' bench was concerned that a high-sticking call was missed prior to the play. Lambert was giving a "high-sticking" motion at the officials, and you could clearly see at least one player say "high-stick" to the officials from the bench. That's certainly challengeable too -- if there is a missed "event" like a penalty in the scoring team's offensive zone that should have led to a stoppage but was part of a sequence that led to a goal, that's allowed to be challenged by a coach.
The possible puck being played with a high-stick happened down below the goal line by Jason Zucker, about 30 seconds before the goal:
It's not totally clear, but it really doesn't look like it went off of Zucker's stick there.
The other weird thing that happened on that play involved the Penguins' bench door, immediately after the possible high-stick. Jeff Carter was in the middle of getting off the ice and onto the bench when the puck went off Archibald into the open door hinge and bounced back out to Archibald. If the puck did go into the door and back into play, that is challengeable by a coach as well.
Lambert said that the officials gave the Islanders' bench "ample opportunity to see if that happened," but the tablets didn't have enough video evidence so they just "moved on."
I asked Archibald what he saw on that part of the sequence.
"It didn't go in to the bench door," he said. "It hit right on the corner. But it didn't go in, so they couldn't really have challenged that."
(That little hinge area isn't exactly "in play," so the Islanders could have probably challenged that goal and had it overturned)
Still, Archibald saw the Islanders bench looking at those tablets, having those discussions on whether to challenge the goal. Whether it was from the potential high-stick, the deflection off the arm or the puck going off the open bench door, the review could have gone a number of different ways.
"I didn't know what to expect," he said. "That could have gone either way. We were lucky that they didn't challenge and it counted."
Penalties for failed coaches challenges are steep. In years past, the consequence was a lost timeout for a first failed challenge, then a two-minute penalty for subsequent failed challenges -- enough to discourage teams from constantly delaying games for frivolous challenges, but still worth risking in hopes of just getting the right call. The consequence now is just the two-minute penalty -- a steep price. If you fail a challenge, not only did your team just get scored on, but now you put the opponent right on the power play. It's risky enough to make coaches think even harder about challenging a call like Archibald's goal.
Though the Penguins didn't end up getting the win in this game, they did get the crucial point in the standings for the game going into overtime. In such a close game, Archibald's goal could have been a difference-maker in getting that point.
