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So if the Magness Arena scoreboard is to blame for a questionable review of Matthew Ford's no-goal, what happens next?
People in the know are saying the 3-2 Denver
victory likely will have to stand. In the NCAA rule book, under
duties of the referee, it says, "The referee(s) decision is final;
there is no appeal."
It's looking more and more like the clock issues previously
mentioned -- the time going from 1.0 seconds to 0.0 then back to
0.9 (you can see it at 34 seconds in this YouTube video
-- played a role in the goal being disallowed. If the Magness Arena
scoreboard displays the same time as the FSN broadcast (the FSN
time apparently comes from a feed from the official time here), and
the review stopped the first time the clock reached 0.0, you can
see how the call was made. The center-ice FSN
replay shows a completely different story, however, because you
can clearly see the green light -- which signifies the end of a
period -- doesn't come on until well after the red light
illuminates, the Badgers start celebrating and both the referee and
assistant referee are signaling for a goal.
Can technicians at the arena fix the clock in time for tonight's
game? If there's a review of a goal at the end of a period again,
what happens?
The change that should come out of this is that the green light should really be part of the review system because that's the exact end of the period. If you've ever noticed at the Kohl Center, the clock on the center-hung scoreboard and the end zone ring beam is usually a few tenths of a second behind when it's running. That might have something to do with the refresh rate of the screen. But at the Kohl, the clock that's used for the review is the one on the face of the third level in the corner, which always shows the game time and appears to be right on with the green light and the horn. At Magness, there isn't a clock like that -- all of them are on matrix boards. Who knows whether those clocks are a few tenths off like the ones at the Kohl.
The NCAA hockey rule book reads: "Time displayed on clock or timing device shall take precedence over any disparity with lights or horn signaling the end of a period or game."
The NCAA basketball rule book reads: "Each period shall end when the red light or LED lights has become activated."
You're not going to see me write this often, but in this case I think basketball has it right.
Just some things for everyone to think over.
Todd D. Milewski is in his fifth season covering the UW men's hockey team for The Capital Times and in his 10th season covering college hockey.