There are ways to lose a game that make you angry, ways that make you sad, ways that make you scratch your head.
Then there are ways like tonight, where you start to question the very laws of physics.
The Bruins lost to the Los Angeles Kings tonight in overtime when Tyler Toffoli scored a goal with 0.4 seconds left.
Heartbreaker, right?
Right.
However, he scored the goal after the Kings won a faceoff with 0.9 seconds left.
Tyler Toffoli with the literal buzzer beater in OT. pic.twitter.com/wWNsfFbuor
— Halloween Name Blinn (@NHLBlinn) October 29, 2017
Uhhhh...
Per the NHL feed shown on NESN, the puck went in with 0.4 seconds left on the clock.
This means that the puck hit Kopitar’s stick off the drop, went 15 feet to Toffoli, and then went some 20 feet to the net in a half second.
A half of a second!!!!
The problem here, in all likelihood, lies with the human nature of clock operators. There’s going to be the tiniest of delays between the time the puck is dropped and the operator presses his button.
That explains things like this:
Toffoli is at the bottom of his shot and the clock hasn't started. pic.twitter.com/JPNmbEFV6L
— Dan Ryan (@bruinshockeynow) October 29, 2017
Toffoli has already taken the shot in under a tenth of a second. TIME WIZARDS. pic.twitter.com/LlKPgIuvik
— Dan Ryan (@bruinshockeynow) October 29, 2017
SORCERY!!!!
Anyways, the Bruins lost, and ended up with three points out of four against their California hockey playing brethren.
Lost in this absurd ending:
- David Pastrnak had to do anything but lose that faceoff as cleanly as possible. He lost it as cleanly as possible.
- Torey Krug iced the puck right before that, leading to the faceoff. A bad play by a guy who had a few of them on a bad night.
What do you think? Sour grapes about clock operators, or some weird rip in the space-time continuum?