Feb. 11--When Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville cooled down after abruptly exiting his postgame news conference Tuesday, the team and the NHL had a talk regarding the goal from winger Brandon Mashinter that officials waved off because of goaltender interference.
It turned out the league agreed with Quenneville. It was the second goal officials had waved off the Hawks side of the scoreboard in three games thanks to an opposing coach's challenge.
"I just think we had a couple occurrences in a short amount of time so obviously there's a little frustration there," Quenneville said. "... There's some education across the board and you have a lot of people in the middle of the process making those decisions. I don't care, as long as we get it right is what we're looking for."
But even as the league admitted it got the call wrong, Commissioner Gary Bettman gave a strong endorsement for the league's process of reviewing goaltender interference, a process Bettman said is "close" to being perfect.
"Over the season we think it's getting even better," Bettman said. "We like what we see. After the season is over we'll evaluate it and see if it needs adjustment. But fundamentally it's sound."
Bettman did not seem to think the calls needed to be centralized at the NHL's hockey operations in Toronto -- a system Hawks players would prefer -- but instead said having the on-ice officials make the determination was the ideal scenario for the league. Part of that stems from interference being a judgment call officials have to make, and who better to make the judgment on what interference is than those officiating the game?
"Our belief, at least for the first season was, it's best left with the officials who are making the call and officiating the entire game so that the standard is consistent throughout the game," Bettman said.
He added the league enacted the coach's challenge to help officials address especially "egregious" calls on the ice and slowing down a play on video replay can help the officials see an error they might have made.
"We'll look at the body of work," Bettman said. "But overall it's working extremely well."
There was still frustration in the Hawks' dressing room Thursday over the interpretation of the interference rule.
"There's been no consistency with the calls this year," goaltender Scott Darling said. "I've had goals scored against me with twice as much interference as the last two that we've had and it didn't get overturned."
Winger Andrew Shaw said the Hawks will try not to let it affect how they attack the net in the offensive zone.
"I still think you need to keep going to the net, keep doing your job but it's tough to see them take goals away, especially how hard it is to score in this league and they're wanting more goals from us," Shaw said. "I don't know what the future holds for that but I know players are still going to go to the net the same way they've been going."
But if the Hawks were hoping for a change to the rule anytime soon, it doesn't appear as if one is near.
Panarin out again: Winger Artemi Panarin will miss his second consecutive game Thursday because of an illness that also kept him out of Tuesday's game against the Sharks. Quenneville said Panarin
