Reviewing goaltender interference a murky subject

Jonathan Quick was concise when asked about the judgment call that deemed Mason Raymond’s goal a good goal last night.

“It’s an unfortunate play that doesn’t work our way,” he said.

Quick appeared to be moved out of position by contact initiated by Curtis Glencross without any stimulus from Brayden McNabb, who was the closest defender. The contact impacted Quick’s ability to recover and make a save off the rebound, which Raymond buried.

It’s a judgment call, and goaltender interference is not reviewable – not yet, anyway. It’s a subject that has been discussed both on this site, and elsewhere.

All teams end up on both sides of goaltender interference calls throughout the season, and to be fair, Dwight King may have gotten away with what could have been judged to be goaltender interference in Game 2 against the Rangers last spring (though an argument could also be made that Ryan McDonagh channeled King into Lundqvist, triggering the contact).

Any mild controversy was washed away when Los Angeles recovered to win the game, 5-3. Naturally, the day after, it emerged as a conversation topic with Kings Head Coach Darryl Sutter.

“I think it’s one of the areas that there is lots of talk about – if that was some sort of a challenge or review, that would be one of them,” Sutter said.

And that opens up the door to further questioning. How would the play be reviewable? What type of plays could be challenged? Is the whole idea of challenging judgment calls even feasible?

“Yeah, but they would have to clarify the rule more, too,” Sutter said, and that’s the crux of the debate.

“That’s the problem. I mean, we could say we’d want it reviewable or that’d be one of the challenges you want, but you still need a clear picture on it so that it’s not a discretionary (judgment) – somehow a clean one. Like, even last night, it’s easy to go look at the replay and say, ‘Well, Jonathan was obstructed in the blue paint,’ but what’s the next part of that? It’s still got to be a clear picture. Yeah, would I like it to be clearer goal-non goal, or penalty-non penalty? For sure. But you just need a little (standardization). It’s one of the things that we’ve talked about for a long time. It all started with the changing the crease from a square crease to a round crease, to being in the crease not-goal, skate, like there’s been so many different areas of it to protecting the goalie because of the importance of position…If you look all the things that happened behind the net, lines, the net itself, the crease, the rules, like if you look, there’s probably been more (rule changes) taking place just in that little area there than in any other part of the game.”

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