The sheer dumb-ass rationalizations people can come up with to excuse this outcome are honestly infuriating. "They should have won it before game 7". "They shouldn't have allowed 4 goals on the penalty". These are not reasonable takes. Vegas had the series won. Those four goals would not have occurred but for a terrible decision by the referees. That is how causation works.
If I cut your brake lines, and rather than allowing your car to roll to a stop, you panic, hit the gas, drive into oncoming traffic and get hit by a semi, I don't get to say "it's your fault because you didn't manage the situation well". I cut your ####ing brake lines. It's my fault you're dead. If anyone is having trouble following, I am the referees in this analogy.
As for the comparison to the Flames series, there is no one call that you can say cost the Flames the series. They allowed over 50 shots in back to back games. They got trounced, including at 5 on 5. To the extent the Avs got the benefit of soft calls, they didn't need the help.
This is a single bad decision that, in and of itself, changed the outcome of a playoff series. That's unacceptable, but because it's the NHL, it will be accepted and publicly treated as if it's not a big deal, because the NHL treats its fans like none-too-bright children.
__________________
"The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
|