STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFS : Kings Should Have Gotten Penalty Shot

Ever seen a penalty shot? Ever seen a hockey game end on a penalty shot? Ever seen a Stanley Cup championship series game end with a solitary player from the home team skating toward a solitary enemy goaltender while every other human being in the building, including the rest of the players, stands off to the side watching, their hearts and pulses pounding furiously while time is standing still?

You could have.

No.

You should have.

If a penalty shot had been awarded Saturday to the Kings the way a penalty shot damn well should have been awarded to the Kings with 12 precious seconds to play, there might not have been any 4-3 disappointment in the overtime period, might not have been any overtime, period. All somebody had to do was blow a whistle. All the referee had to do was obey NHL law.

Maybe they were too busy inspecting the Kings’ sticks.

Rule 53(c) specifically states: “No defending player, except the goaltender, will be permitted to fall on the puck, hold the puck or gather the puck into the body or hands (italics mine) when the puck is within the goal crease.”

But there atop the puck, for all to see, lay Guy Carbonneau of the Montreal Canadiens, gathering it in, smothering it with his body, with the score 3-3 and a dozen ticks on the overhead clock in the first Stanley Cup game ever played on California ice. The defending player occupied the crease, where he didn’t belong. He was not the Montreal goaltender, but he fell on the puck there all the same, and he gathered it in and he held it there until play was stopped.

And, says the book:

“For infringement of this rule, play shall immediately be stopped and a penalty shot shall be ordered against the offending team.”

Now, I don’t know how many of the more than 16,000 maniacs who came to Saturday’s game have actually seen a penalty shot in person. I don’t know how much noise Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Andre Agassi, Reggie Jackson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Goldie Hawn, Sheena Easton, Shannen Doherty, Tori Spelling, John Candy, James Woods, Nicolas Cage, Michael Eisner, Heather Locklear or any other notables who requested tickets would have made had one King player been left alone at mid-ice to zero in on the Montreal goalie with one shot to win the game.

All I know is that it would have been one unforgettable sight.

It might have been Tomas Sandstrom.

Or Warren Rychel.

They were the Kings involved most in the play.

You could have cut the suspense with a curved blade.

Alas, no such luck. Nothing whatsoever was called. Referee Terry Gregson didn’t go tweet and didn’t say boo. Wayne Gretzky, who was pointing and absolutely pleading for a penalty shot, was told by the referee at the time, and Kings’ Coach Barry Melrose was told after the game, that the puck had been shot into Carbonneau, thereby nullifying the rule.

Sandstrom pleaded ignorance.

“I didn’t see it,” he said. “I just saw the guy in the crease and Warren tried to poke-check it in. I don’t know how it stayed out.”

Carbonneau pleaded innocence.

“I couldn’t feel anything,” he said. “All I know is that Rychel knocked me down. That’s why I was in the crease in the first place. Rychel cross-checked me there. He’s the one who should have gotten a penalty, not me.

“I fell down. My shoulder hit the net and I tried to knock the net out (off its hinges). But I don’t know where the puck was. All I felt was Rychel’s stick all over me. I don’t know anything else.’

And Rule 53(c)?

That, he knew.

“As long as you don’t use your hand to bring in the puck, you’re not breaking the rule,” Carbonneau said. “And I didn’t.”

Didn’t he?

Watch a replay some time.

The Kings will, on their VCRs and in their minds, for a long time to come.

Gretzky surely will.

“The puck was under Carbonneau, clearly,” Gretzky said.

Bryan Lewis, NHL supervisor of officials, issued a statement afterward, saying: “According to Rule 53(c), if a player is down and the puck is shot into him or under him, it is a stoppage, not a penalty. (Referee) Terry (Gregson) saw it that the player was down and the puck was shot underneath him, causing a stoppage in play.”

Said Gretzky: “I learned a new rule tonight. I learned that if you shoot the puck into a guy in the crease, it’s not a penalty shot. I didn’t know that’s the rule.”

Maybe the Kings should have tried something else.

Maybe they should have shot Carbonneau into the net.