Colorado Avalanche Have Game Partially Stolen by Officials

The Colorado Avalanche lost last night in part because of bad officiating, including two disallowed goals from offsides challenges.

The Colorado Avalanche did not play a stellar game last night. Maybe they even didn’t deserve to win against a Nashville Predators team that looks perennially ready to challenge for the Stanley Cup. But nor did they deserve to have not one but two goals called back for offsides — and the third questioned as well.

When you question all three of a team’s goals, and overturn two of them on bare technicalities, that brings some questions. Such behavior seems just a little fishy.

Matters get a little fishier when you realize the Avalanche have a hard time winning when a certain referee is calling the game. Eric Furlatt was one of the referees last night, and Colorado hasn’t won in a game he officiated since 2015-16. That’s now eight games in a row they’ve lost when Furlatt is a referee.

Are the two related? I hesitate to say they’re unrelated. If you look at Scouting the Refs for the same game, the Nashville Predators went 2-1 under Furlatt last year and 4-0 the previous year.

Compare that to Furlatt’s co-hort, fellow ref Gord Dwyer. The Avalanche went 4-2 last year and 3-2 the previous. Nashville went 2-3 and 2-4 respectively. Doesn’t that seem a little more even-handed?

If you look at another game that occurred last night, Washington against Pittsburgh, we see a seasoned veteran, Wes McCauley, who became a full-time NHL referee in 2005 and has been selected to work in six consecutive Stanley Cup Finals since 2013. His record for the Pens the last couple years is 3-3, 3-3, but the Capitals haven’t exactly gotten the shaft — 2-4, 4-1.

That’s a small sampling. And I’m not saying Furlatt was a huge factor in last night’s loss. However, it’s something I would hope the NHL would look into.

A bigger factor was the fact that all three goals were reviewed, and two were overturned.

First goal disallowed:

Second goal disallowed:

Both of those are brutal calls. You could make a case for the second one being offsides because Alexander Kerfoot was doing a leaping lizard over the blueline before the puck entered the zone:

However, the Samuel Girard move is inconclusive:

The blueline, which is under ice, isn’t razor sharp. Therefore, you can’t argue decisively that the puck is completely over the blueline. The photo evidence is inconclusive, which means the call on the ice must stand. And the call on the ice was that it was a good goal.

Well, bad officiating and a b.s. disallowed goal happened last night. You know what else happened? Some really sloppy play by the Colorado Avalanche. That’s ultimately what cost them the game.

We’ll explore in tomorrow’s game preview what the team needs to do to get back in the win column. Because they’ve now lost four in a row and five of their last six. It’s too early for the Colorado Avalanche to be experiencing a bump in the road — especially since they’re a mostly healthy team.