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Greg Wyshynski, ESPN
Vancouver Canucks coach Rick Tocchet defended his decision not to use a coach’s challenge to review the Predators‘ game-tying goal in Nashville’s 2-1 Game 5 victory on Tuesday night.
At 7:15 of the third period, with Vancouver’s Dakota Joshua in the box for boarding, Predators defenseman Roman Josi went hard to the Canucks net and made contact with goalie Arturs Silovs. The puck ended up behind Silovs, who scrambled to find it.
Both Vancouver forward Teddy Blueger and Nashville winger Gustav Nyquist crashed the crease, and the momentum pushed Silovs into the puck, forcing it over the goal-line for a Nashville power-play goal.
“I’m sure they took a look at it,” said Josi, who scored his first goal of the playoffs. “I tried to go around the goalie. [The puck] just somehow laid there. I don’t know what happened after. But I laid there, I saw that it went in. That’s all that matters.”
Nashville would score the game-winning goal 5:31 later on an Alexandre Carrier shot, cutting Vancouver’s series lead to 3-2.
“If we’re down 2-1, then maybe [I’d challenge]. But it’s 50/50 at that point,” Tocchet explained after the game. “We just looked at it. I don’t know what the NHL would do on that one. I don’t. So if I don’t know 100% … it’s a 1-1 game. We thought about it, but I thought it was 50/50 personally.”
According to Scouting The Refs, the Canucks issued only one coach’s challenge in the regular season for goalie interference.
If Tocchet guessed wrong and the goal stood after review, Vancouver would have been given a minor penalty for delay of game. But some fans felt it would have been worth the gamble in Game 5.
Until Josi’s power-play goal on that scoring play, Nashville had one power-play goal on 18 opportunities.
“Our penalty kill did a great job until that goal on that weird play,” Canucks forward J.T. Miller said.
The Predators avoided elimination, pushing the series to a Game 6 on Friday.
“I’m proud of the resiliency they showed,” Nashville coach Andrew Brunette said. “They stuck with it. The message was that it might take forever but to keep pounding on the door. I think they did a really good job staying true to themselves.”