Last night’s Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals was a close one, with the Colorado Avalanche taking the edge in Overtime. Nazem Kadri scored the game winner in his first game back from injury. Kadri had thumb surgery only 18 days before Game 4, an injury he got against the Edmonton Oilers in the Western Conference finals.
Lightning Head Coach Jon Cooper was furious with the goal, stating that…
“You’re gonna see what I mean when you see the winning goal. My heart breaks for the players because we probably still should be playing.”
Jon Cooper refused to answer any more questions, and left the stage after that response.
He believes that the Avalanche had too many men on the ice when the goal was scored, but when you look at the image, the Lightning also had too many men on the ice. Now, there is also a video of the line change, and Kadri hops on a couple seconds before his teammate gets to the bench, but that happens every single period, every single game. Tampa Bay players were doing the same thing on this play. If the refs called every slightly delayed line chang a penalty, we would have a couple hundred of those penalties a year. Here’s the image of right before Kadri’s game winner.
Kadri was asked to respond on what Jon Cooper said in his post game interview, and here were his thoughts:
“Puck hit the back of the net, end of story”
Many people on Twitter believe that this is Karma for the Tampa Bay Lightning, who last year had 7 guys on the ice when they scored the go-ahead goal against the Islanders in the 2021 Eastern Conference Finals.
End of the day, the slight delay in players changing is something that happens in every level of hockey, every single game. Once a player sees their guy coming to the bench, they hop on and get into the play when they think the player is close enough. A too many men on the ice situation is not subject to a video review, and probably wouldn’t have been called a no goal anyways.
