One result coach Dave Cottle broached was the furor over an official’s decision to waive off an apparent goal by junior attackman Ryan Young with 2 minutes, 11 seconds left in the fourth quarter. The goal would have tied the score at 10, but the official ruled that Young had been guilty of a crease violation.
The replays have been inconclusive as it appears that Young’s left foot may have touched the line before he swatted the ball into the net. Cottle’s lone argument is that the official, who was standing on the opposite side of the net at least 15 yards away, was too far away to make a conclusive decision.
“My only problem with it is that from where the ref was standing, it was a tough call, and when you make a call like that, you’ve got to make sure that you know what you see,” Cottle said. “I thought he was a little far away and that he couldn’t be sure. I don’t think anybody’s sure right now. But you know what? We haven’t spent a lot of time on that because we can’t fix that. We can fix what we did wrong to get down 6-0 [in the first quarter], we can fix our face-off game, we can fix executing a little better on the offensive end of the field. Whether it was a bad break or bad luck or whatever, we’ve just got to move on and fix the things we can control.”