The NHL Has A Buzzer Beater Problem
Glenn James. Getty Images.We're just a few weeks away from the start of March Madness. Nothing reigns more supreme in the month of March than buzzer beaters. That shit is electric. You go back-and-forth for 40 minutes straight and all of a sudden the game comes down to one final shot. The slow-mo replay shows the ball leave the finger tips maybe 4 tenths of a second before the buzzer goes off, shot goes in, plays goes wild. Game is over and everybody realizes they just witnessed something special.
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Awesome, right? Gets the people going. Gets the folks all sorts of jazzed.
Hockey don't give a shit. Hockey doesn't care if their fans are jazzed or not. Hockey wants to rip your heart out of your chest cavity, slam it on the ground and proceed to take a massive deuce on it. You want buzzer beaters in hockey? Tough luck, pal.
Two nights ago it was Patty Kane delivering what could have been one of his final great moments as a Blackhawk in overtime against Vegas.
The puck magically finds his stick in the final seconds of overtime. He comes flying down the ice on a breakaway and unleashes an absolute fucking bomb from the top of the circles for the win. Only issue is that the puck didn't cross the goal line before the final buzzer. They still ended up winning in a shootout, but everybody hates the shootout so who gives a shit anyway.
Then we get to last night. This time it was Chicago getting dunked on at the final moments of regulation when Tyler Seguin decided it wasn't ready to go home yet and wanted to send the game to overtime.
Only issue, again, is that the puck didn't cross the line before the final buzzer. No goal, game over, everybody goes home miserable thanks to Gary Bettman sleeping on the job.
Now anybody with half a functioning brain is probably wondering why neither of those counted. You see the shots clearly leave the player's stick before the clock hits triple zeroes. But like I said, Gary Bettman hates fun. Absolutely despises electricity. He's too busy trying to save the Coyotes from going bankrupt for the 5th time that he hasn't figured out they should probably change the rule already to make it so a shot released before 0:00:01 still counts even if it hits the back of the net after the green light goes off.
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Typically this wouldn't even be much of an issue. I mean how many true buzzer beaters have we actually seen in the NHL? But the fact that we got 2 of these in 2 nights? This close to March Madness? It just seems like the Hockey Gods are toying with us at the moment, and we need to act now before it gets too out of hand.
While we're at it, let's fix the offsides review rule too.