Tim Stützle caught in two baffling crease calls

The two clips making the rounds from Ottawa's game against Anaheim tell the whole story.

On one, Stützle gets called for goalie interference and the goal comes off the board. On the other, there is no call at all.

That's the problem right there. Same player, same kind of net-front scramble, two different rulings, and fans are left wondering what standard the league is even using.

What makes it worse is that the calls look backward. The disallowed goal is the one where you can clearly see Stützle trying to avoid Ville Husso as he cuts through the crease area.

The no-call clip is the one that looks far more likely to get whistled dead.

Players notice that stuff right away. When a forward drives the net now, he's not just thinking about the puck, the rebound, or a defenseman leaning on him. He's also guessing how the crease will be judged on that one shift.

That's no way to play. A league built on split-second reads can't keep asking players to make contact decisions around the goalie when the standard changes from one review to the next.

And that's why Ottawa not challenging the waved-off goal almost says as much as the call itself. Coaches know these reviews can turn into a coin flip.

The NHL rule says a goal should come back only when the attacking player prevents the goalie from moving freely in the crease or makes deliberate contact.

It also says incidental contact can be allowed if the attacker makes a reasonable effort to avoid it.

That sounds clean on paper. It never feels clean on the ice. The Associated Press reported that league executives and managers still treat these plays as judgment calls, not black-and-white decisions, and even Connor Hellebuyck has spoken about how hard they are to define.

That's why the Nathan MacKinnon-Connor Ingram play still hangs over this debate.

MacKinnon was tossed after crashing into Ingram on a drive to the net, while Colorado argued Darnell Nurse caused the collision and that MacKinnon was trying to avoid the goalie.

It's the same frustration showing up again with Stützle. Was there contact? Yes. Was there an effort to avoid the goalie? Also yes, at least on the waved-off goal.

And if effort to avoid contact is supposed to matter, then players need to know it will actually matter when the tape gets reviewed. Right now, they don't.

That leaves the league with a rule everybody can quote and almost nobody trusts. For a call this big, that's a mess the NHL still hasn't cleaned up.

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